Your guide to understanding how aim works on artificial turf.
Putting Baseline
Putting is an essential stroke in the game of golf, as it can immensely influence a player’s outcome in a single round. Any putting surface, natural or artificial, has essential playability parameters that rule the “putting quality” of such a surface. Bounce, spin, trueness, speed, aim, firmness, and consistency are some of the key attributes that affect “putting quality”.
To guarantee our synthetic turf greens putted comparable to natural greens we created standardized testing methods to evaluate both natural and synthetic putting greens. These testing methods help deliver the country club golf course experience at your own backyard putting green.
The Putting Green Assessment Tool is created to objectively measure the effect of diverse surfaces on the golf ball. The process is automated in such a way that it ignores the human interference and variability. For example, a human asked to putt 10 times will likely produce 10 different shots. It uses a simple device equipped with a free swinging putter to frequently reproduce identical ball strokes for the putting motion, and two launching mechanisms that administer backspin to the ball from ground level and from 2ft from the ground. The instrument creates data related to ball strike, spin, bounce, and aim. Other tests used in the protocol are familiar to most in the golf industry: speed and firmness(Stimpmeter and TruFirm).
This practice can be used to:
1. Organize a base level for ideal playability of putting greens using natural grass greens at the highest level;
2. Benchmark playability of a notable course vs. the baseline;
3. Benchmark the playability of an artificial putting system vs. natural green;
4. Create product comparison data and advance product development intentionally to achieve a specific target.
How Turf Affects Aim
Aim is a significant skill you have to practice to get the shot dead on every time, but did you know that the status of the turf you’re on factors in a role, too? Here are the few elements that affect how the ball reacts when you’ve taken your swing and the ball hits the turf:
Turf Stiffness
The rigidity of the turf influences how the golf ball will move throughout the putt, if the fiber is not optimized for putting particularly it can produce unpredictable ball movement while rolling ”chatter.”
Friction Properties
Friction properties between the ball and the turf also hugely affect how the ball slides and rolls. If putting surface friction is not optimized it will not correctly transition the club face and spin will forge a bouncing effect instead of a smooth roll.
Pile Lay
A natural green is rolled to guarantee the fibers are not standing upright. Properly infilled putting greens will imitate natural rolled greens and avoid grain inconsistencies.
To test aim and surface variation; we measured the relative variation of standardized putts on a lot of different putting surfaces (bermuda, bent, nylon synthetic, polyethylene synthetic, and polypropylene synthetic)
The Southwest Greens Difference
Having a high quality turf will give you the understanding to know the ball will behave the way it is supposed to. The type of turf will surely affect your shot. The accuracy of the turf lets the aim be as accurate as it can be, and you can now have this at your home with our fan-favorite Golden Bear Turf.
Golden Bear Turf’s aim is scientifically developed and tested to match pro-quality putting greens. Shot after shot and putt after putt, Golden Bear has the snugest perimeter and the finest aim of any putting surface. For pro-level consistency, it’s hands down the perfect synthetic green for putting aim on the market.