Artificial Putting Greens

[HeftyHacker]

How do.

I've got an area at the back of my garden that's about 2m x 5m that is currently unused for anything other than chucking odds and sods on for storage.

I'm thinking about turning it into an artificial putting green and just wanted to tap into the hive mind to hopefully answer a few questions I have...

1) has anyone done similar?

2) is it best to let professionals install or is it easy enough to do yourself? It would be a natural base (not concrete).

3) would you try and incorporate some slopes and breaks into it or does flat work best?

4) is it a waste of time and money? Ie something you like the idea of but then in reality rarely use?

Cheers,

HH

 

[adasko]

1 did it in my old house
2 got it done by the gardener who didn't play golf and wasn't overly impressed, if you want it to reflect real greens you need a professional. If you want to do it yourself its harder then it looks, you need few types of soil and sand and a wacker plate. 2m x 5m might seems not a lot but its actually quiet big job for a practice green. Make sure you get putting green astro turf as well its a bit more expensive. If you go ahead with just normal astro turf you might as well just practice on the carpet.
3 ideally you want something like a union flag, is good to have a little breaks but long straight putts is a best practice
4 I used it a lot for the first 6 months not so much after, its really boring after a while

 

[howbow88]

I installed mine myself. It's quite labour intensive but not overly fiddly. I reckon all in, it cost just over a grand for a 2m x 9m strip. I was quote something like £4,500 + VAT from one company and decided to give it a go myself. The only issue I really have with it, is that it's not as level as I wanted it but you get to learn the slopes.

I can't say for sure, but I would have thought that you would need something other than soil underneath the fake grass... I put in a mix of sand and MOT 1, then used a wacker plate to compress it. I think I dug down about 30cm.

I still use it a couple of times a week but yeah, it can get boring. I just put my headphones in and listen to a podcast. I definitely use it far less in the winter. One of the main reasons I did is that I have a north facing garden, and so growing lush grass on there was impossible. It looked ok in the middle of Summer but in Winter it looked awful, so I either would have paved over it or got fake grass. I decided that if I was going to get fake grass, why not just get a putting green

 

[clubchamp98]

Get a composite decking and just buy a nice putting mat.

I am in the same position 4mx3m and was going to do the same but I am doing the above now.

 

[Jigger]

The biggest issue you’ll have is compacting it enough to ensure it doesn’t sink in places and become bumpy. It will probably need constant heavy rolling.

I recall watching a good video years ago on how it should be done right but it’s probably an lot easier to build a platform and add it on top of that.