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 key playability parameters that determine the “putting quality” of such a surface. Bounce, spin, trueness, speed, aim, firmness, and regularity are some of the key attributes that affect “putting quality”.
To ensure our synthetic turf greens putted similar to natural greens we forged standardized testing methods to check 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 devised to objectively measure the effect of diverse surfaces on the golf ball. The method is automated in such a way that it ignores the human interference and variability. For example, a human requested to putt 10 times will likely create 10 different shots. It uses a simple device equipped with a free swinging putter to regularly 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 device creates data related to ball strike, spin, bounce, and aim. Other tests used in the protocol are well-known to most in the golf industry: speed and firmness(Stimpmeter and TruFirm).
This method can be used to:
1. Organize a guideline for perfect 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 fundamental skill you have to perfect to get the shot precise 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 influence 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 specifically it can produce erratic ball movement while rolling ”chatter.”
Friction Properties
Friction properties amidst 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 ensure the fibers are not standing upright. Correctly infilled putting greens will replicate natural rolled greens and avoid grain irregularities.
To test aim and surface variation; we measured the relative variation of standardized putts on a ton of various putting surfaces (bermuda, bent, nylon synthetic, polyethylene synthetic, and polypropylene synthetic)
The Southwest Greens Difference
Having a good value turf will give you the assurance to know the ball will behave the way it is supposed to. The kind of turf will surely affect your shot. The precision of the turf lets the aim be as accurate as possible, and you can now have this on your own lawn with our fan-favorite Golden Bear Turf.
Golden Bear Turf’s aim is scientifically developed and tested to go toe-to-toe with pro-quality putting greens. Shot after shot and putt after putt, Golden Bear has the tightest perimeter and the most accurate aim of any putting surface. For pro-level consistency, it’s simply the best synthetic green for putting aim on the market.