Garage Practice Area - Advice/Experience Needed

[JohnLew]

I am currently planning out a practice area in my garage for the winter. I'm going to start with just an area to hit balls into a net and incorporate a launch monitor when I decide on which one (probably GC2 or GCQuad).

I'm not that interested in playing full rounds so I will likely just leave the display up to an iPad screen or display it on a flat screen that I already have in the garage. No need to project a screen and do a full setup.

My thought was to put a TrueStrike mat in there and then put Archery Netting on a track on the ceiling so it can be pulled to the side and bungied to the wall when not in use. Thinking 10x10 netting.

Am I making any mistakes here? What is the bounce back like on the netting? I hadn't intended on putting anything on the sides if the bounce back is negligible.

Thanks.

[mikemcd22]

If you are reasonably sure of your swing and feel like even your missed shots will not come straight off the toe or heel of the club (go directly right or left) then you should be fine with just the netting (that's how I started as well). However, if you have friends over... all bets are off, especially if you have windows in your garage. One thing though, this may be just me but... I'm not sure I would spend between $6,000.00 and $16,000.00 only to have a driving range in my garage. I suspect once you get a GCQuad, you are going to want to play rounds of golf... which will inevitably leave you wanting a "full set up". If you're truly not going to play rounds, save yourself thousands of dollars and go with Skytrak Or a refurbished GC2.

[wbond]

In the past, i've used archery netting (PR20) and slid it out of the way when not needed. it worked very well and has very little bounce back.

[JohnLew]

If you are reasonably sure of your swing and feel like even your missed shots will not come straight off the toe or heel of the club (go directly right or left) then you should be fine with just the netting (that's how I started as well). However, if you have friends over... all bets are off, especially if you have windows in your garage. One thing though, this may be just me but... I'm not sure I would spend between $6,000.00 and $16,000.00 only to have a driving range in my garage. I suspect once you get a GCQuad, you are going to want to play rounds of golf... which will inevitably leave you wanting a "full set up". If you're truly not going to play rounds, save yourself thousands of dollars and go with Skytrak Or a refurbished GC2.

Fair point. I'm just much more of a range rat than a sim golfer. I usually spend 3-4 days/week in the winter going to PGA Tour Superstore over lunch and hitting balls for an hour on their GC2's in the Practice Bays. Never play any holes, just practice.

4 handicap so I'm reasonably confident in where the ball is going, just always working on something I'm trying to improve on the swing. I will have my kids hitting in there too but if I pull the cars out when they hit then there's nothing major that could be damaged (no windows, etc.)

I will probably go with a refurbished GC2 or secondary market on one if that's the route I go.

[JohnLew]

One last question - is it a bad idea to have slack in the netting? I am going to start with a 10-12 ft wide area but I'm thinking of buying a 16 or 20ft wide archery net in case I want to extend the width later on or put in a curved track so it kind of "wraps" on one side.

[wbond]

No problem with having extra width, you could also unroll a little to get a new impact area

[JohnLew]

Great, thank you.