Golf Hitting Mat: How To Choose

A golf hitting mat is a necessary aspect of a golf simulator setup, but how do you know which one is best? We’ll help you compare. 

Without a golf hitting mat, you could either ruin your golf clubs by hitting off your garage cement floor, or ruin your carpeting by swinging sharp wedges inside. 

Generally, it is better to hit off a golf mat. It will protect your floor and your clubs, not just one or the other. 

Here’s what you should look at when choosing a hitting mat:

• Feel: make sure your new golf mat is similar to hitting off real grass at a golf course. A golf mat that feels like real turf is going to help you see more off-course to on-course improvement.

• Softness: make sure your golf mat is just soft enough to avoid injuries to your arms and back after swinging. 

• Durability: make sure the golf mat is not going to need to be replaced after a few indoor rounds of golf.

• Longevity: make sure that even if the hitting mat does wear out, pieces of it are simple to replace. An example would be replacing the worn out area with Carl’s Divot Hitting Strip, or being able to buy a replacement gel or range section on a TrueStrike mat.

• Usability: make sure that the hitting mat works with the launch monitor you are planning to use, has a way to take a real tee or use a rubber tee, and is easy enough to move if necessary.

Check out our list of favorite hitting mats. 

Comparing Popular Golf Mats

Although many hitting mats tend to be very similar, some are made quite different. According to its website, a Fiberbuilt mat is “made from a special blend of monofilaments engineered for strength and durability.” These monofilaments, or synthetic fibers, act as the grass blades. Here's some more info on Fiberbuilt mats. 

With a mat like the TrueStrike series, the fibers are much shorter but the hitting section comes with a gel bag underneath to provide a more realistic fairway shot that will punish you for hitting too much “grass” before the ball.

Then there is the Carl’s HotShot™ Hitting Mat, which provides the best of a lot of worlds: it’s nice and soft, meaning your joints shouldn’t hurt after hitting off of it, and it’s budget friendly. The Country Club Elite is similar, but slightly firmer. 

The Fiberbuilt and TrueStrike mats are both modular, meaning they can be moved and assembled pretty quickly. The modular designs make sections of the mats easier to replace if they get worn out.

In the table below, we compare three popular hitting mats.