Leading courses, clubs and practice facilities are increasingly adopting indoor simulator bays to better serve their players, whether it's a way to provide off-season practice and play, or it's one of the best ways to conduct fittings and instruction. While launch monitors, simulator software and enclosures are critical components of these practice environments, the role the golf mat plays in ensuring the best experience can't be underestimated. Why? Because the mat is the one physical element of the simulator setup that provides a direct connection to the player and his or her clubs.
You simply don’t want your high end simulator system to be paired with a mediocre hitting mat. We always liken it to buying a new Ferrari and putting a set of 1979 AMC Pacer wheels on it. Your golf simulator's mat should be as premium as the indoor practice environment you’ve set up. Here’s why:
Launch Monitor Metrics
You’ve made the investment to give your players a superior indoor practice experience and to provide your teachers and fitters with a great platform. So you want to make sure your hitting surface provides the most realistic impact conditions and launch monitor metrics to take full advantage of it. That's the only way to ensure what's happening in your simulator bay matches the reality of the course. And that's critical when your players are trying to dial in their club distances.
How Fiberbuilt Addresses It: All three of Fiberbuilt Golf's hitting surfaces provide excellent performance in simulating real turf. The gold standard is the Player Preferred Series, with its Pure Impact Turf hitting panels that have been launch monitor tested to most accurately reflect the launch conditions of real fairway turf. Teachers and fitters universally prefer this hitting surface to ensure the guidance they're providing is on the money. 
Club-Turf Interaction
When you want the most realistic golf experience in your simulator bays, you not only want accurate launch conditions, you also want it to feel like real golf on a real course. Again, since the mat is the golfer's only physical connection to their simulator play, it's absolutely critical that it delivers club-turf interaction that simulates actual course conditions. All too often, lesser mats get compacted or don't have the construction that allows the golfer to hit down and through. Instead, they often experience excessive clubhead bounce that removes any meaningful feel or feedback on the quality of the strike.
How Fiberbuilt Addresses It: With Fiberbuilt Golf’s three different hitting surface options, club-turf interaction is at a premium, and the mats' rubber base provides cushion that makes the feel at impact more comfortable and realistic. The most advanced of the three hitting surfaces, the Player Preferred Series, was created with a proprietary Vibration Absorption Layer to avoid the “mat effect” of traditional mats. With the Player Preferred Series, players can hit down and through like real turf and you’ll get feedback in both the feel AND SOUND at impact. So your teachers and fitters will immediately know if players are hitting the ball solidly or inconsistently, which will help guide their practice and make their play far more realistic.
Variation of Shot Types
When it comes to what shots you can hit on a golf simulator, not all of them offer the same shots or handle them in the same way. For example, most golf simulators allow for putting, but how they handle it depends on the hardware and software you use. Most camera-based systems with high-speed overhead or floor-mounted cameras track putts accurately right off the face, while radar-based systems often struggle more with slow-rolling putts and may rely on auto-putt or third-party software for short-game completion. The key is that you want a mat that accommodates your simulator's shot types, and certainly does not limit you when you want to integrate putting into your practice environment.
How Fiberbuilt Addresses It: In cases where your simulator setup will only focus on swings (full swings, pitches and chips, but no putting), Fiberbuilt's Hitting Mats are perfect. They come in different configurations and sizes (including custom designs) and you can choose among our three different hitting surfaces. But if putting will also be part of the practice or play on your simulator system, Fiberbuilt offers its Combo Mats, which combine our world-class hitting mats with a premium putting green. These mats, often custom-designed for a facility's particular bay specs, generally fill the space from the hitting area to the screen with putting turf and include real metal cups for auditory feedback. They can also be designed for a wall-to-wall layout, providing full coverage of the space with the cleanest look (no edges on the rubber base).
Injury Prevention
When your players are practicing or playing in your simulators, the last thing you want is for them to get hurt. Unfortunately, repetitive impact on lower quality mats can be jarring on their joints, especially their elbows and wrists. You want them to be able to hit consistently without worrying about painful impact, and certainly don't want them to get flinchy because your hitting surface is taking its toll on them.
How Fiberbuilt Addresses It: Thanks to the meticulous design of its turf components and the use of a rubber foundation for all of its mats, each of Fiberbuilt Golf's hitting surfaces is easy on players' joints. When injury prevention is a top priority, the premier hitting surface for joint-friendly practice is the Fiberbuilt Grass Series. Its hitting panels use a dense bristle design that lets the clubhead slide down and through the turf without fear of players hurting their joints. (Plus, it’s ultra-durable for the longest-lasting hitting surface available.)
Stability
The last thing you want in your premium simulator setup is the your mat moving under your players' feet. Slipping and sliding is a major problem with lower quality mats, and it will both throw off your players' swings and make your launch monitor information less accurate.
How Fiberbuilt Addresses It: We avoid these problems by integrating a stable rubber base into all of our mats, and we use turf with ultra-grippy rubber backing to keep it firmly in place. So there's no movement or twisting underfoot.
Aesthetics
To deliver a rewarding experience for your players and keep the quality perception of your facility, you want the mat in your simulator bay to be great-looking just as much as you want it to be great-performing. For a first-class presentation, it should not only have natural-looking colors, but also a clean design.
How Fiberbuilt Addresses It: Fiberbuilt hitting mats and Combo Mats look very neat, uniform and (literally) elevated with their rubber base systems to frame the hitting surfaces. Those surfaces can use hitting strips such as what’s in the Player Preferred Series or Fiberbuilt Grass Series, or people who install simulators often prefer a clean, uniform hitting surface like the Performance Turf Series, where you can even put a real tee right into the turf. Either way, you get a hitting surface that’s as attractive as the rest of your golf simulator setup.
Easy Setup
Even though simulator setups tend to have a reasonably sized footprint, many mat configurations can cause a long, painful installation process. You want it to be easy to set up and get your players practicing on it as quickly as possible. And you also want it to be easy to replace components when they're worn. All too often, when turf has to be screwed down or glued down, none of this falls into place.
How Fiberbuilt Addresses It: Thanks to its modular rubber base system, Fiberbuilt Golf’s hitting mats and Combo Mats allow for exceptionally fast, tool-free setup. Quickly lay down and connect the base, place the turf sections and hitting panels on top and you’re ready to go. And with our component-based systems, if you need to rotate or replace any turf elements, it's quick and easy.
If you want more guidance on what to look for in a golf hitting mat for your simulator or to create your customized solution, get in touch with our customer service experts directly at (833) 328-3218 or customerservice@fiberbuiltgolf.com.
