I’m not a PGA Professional, in fact, I’m not even that good of a golfer, but I do love the sport and that’s where GGA came from. Providing incredible trips for golfers by golfers.
Along the way I decided, as well as doing course reviews of the different types of course available in Argentina, it’d be fun to jot down the occasional note regarding products I stumble across during my golf journey that have helped me, and that I feel may help fellow “average” golfers out there.
Hope it helps! Cheers Jon
This is the first of such a post, and it’s on the Acustrike Golf Mat.
Now, as I mentioned, I’m not that good, I play off 20, so I don’t really feel I can call it a review because perhaps I’m not qualified to do so. So this is just my opinion, take it for what it’s worth!
The Acustrike Golf Mat is a fairly unassuming piece of kit, it’s a strip of green felt with some markings on it…. That might not sound like much but I’ve yet to use a “training aid” that has shown instant results like this has, I was truly surprised and impressed. There a two models, one for outdoor use and one for indoor, I purchased (that’s right, they didn’t send it me for free) the outdoor mat as I figured it’d give me the option of using it in both scenarios.
For outdoor use there are pegs holes in each corner to secure it to the ground, when I use it on my terrace, I put a towel down to add a bit of padding and hit balls from there. If you wanted to secure it completely you could use some double sided tape, but I find for chipping purposes, the towel stops it moving after every shot and adds a bit of softness to the ground you’re hitting from.
The premise of the mat is that when you strike down on the ball (or just take a swing, it works equally well without a ball) the felt is brushed in the direction your club was moving. This instantly allows you to see your club path and whether you hit too far behind the ball or not. For me, being a 20 handicapper, this was an absolute revelation! I knew I had a tendency to hit shots a bit fat and the mat proved this to be true, BUT, what it also allowed me to do was to try out little tweaks on my swing until I was able to vastly reduced the regularity of me fatting it, giving me instant feedback on what tweak worked and what didn’t so I could either keep practising it or bin it and move on to a new idea.
Within two weeks of buying this mat I broke 100 for the first time, and have now got my PB down to 92. The pre Acustrike era was littered with scores around the 105 to 110 mark, so the proof is in the pudding, it’s seriously helped me lower my score and has given me the consistency of strike I was striving for………Now, if I could only stop slicing it so badly!
There are a multitude of training aids out there, some overpriced junk, some inexpensive and useful. I would say the Acustrike Golf Mat is by far the best one I’ve ever experienced and would wholeheartedly recommend it if, like me, you struggle with your strike consistency. It’s worth noting that the white guidelines do wear out pretty quickly with continued use but I think you could easily touch these up using some Tipex or a small amount of white paint.
The Acustrike Golf Mat retails for £44.99 or $49.95 if you’re in the USA, you can follow the link to their website to check them out and if you wish to purchase it, use the code “gogolfargentina” and you’ll get 10% off!
P.S. I’m not getting a kick back for this from them, I’m just nice.
