Putting Greens News & Blog

When the Golf Course Comes to You: Home Putting Green

Wednesday, March 1st, 2006

DIY Family Sports host Belma Johnson recently had a segment on “when the golf course comes to you.” If practice makes perfect, then ideally perfection would begin in your own backyard. While that may not be feasible for race-car drivers or scuba divers, it can be for golfers — particularly since it’s now both possible and affordable to install a personal putting green at your home.

A discernible advantage to having a home putting green practice area is that you can hone your golf skills without any of the distractions you might have at a golf course, public park, etc. Repetition in a relaxed setting — without interruptions — may well be the key to helping you perfect your short game techniques.

Before beginning a home putting green project, consider carefully where you want to locate the green. If you’re interested only in practicing your putting, you may want to install a green adjacent to your house. In that case, you can elevate the surface of the putting green slightly and border it with a landscaping border such as Windsor blocks. If you also want to practice chipping and pitching, you may want to locate it in an area away from the house, and you might consider putting in a small bunker as well. In that case you might construct the green so that the surface is at a natural ground level and surround it with a simple berm.

Consider the topography of your property and select an area that will require the least amount of grading. At least for the sizable preparatory steps in the job — grading and bringing in the rock substrate — you may want to hire a landscaper who has the proper equipment to take care of these steps very quickly.

For practice purposes, the finished home putting green closely approximates real bent grass such as that used on golf-course greens. Because of the way the turf fibers are prepared so that they stand upright, the surface behaves much as grass does in terms of the way the ball rolls, checks, slows down and breaks. What’s more, the price tag for installing an artifical putting green is a small fraction of what real greens cost.