Every golfer at one point or another has dreamed of just being able to walk out of their back door and start putting with a hot cup of coffee in their hand and without having to get dressed up. For the lucky few that can afford to live on a golfing estate, this is a reality that they get to enjoy daily, but most people will have to make a different plan.
Fortunately, it’s not an impossible dream – in fact, building a mini golf course at home is a lot easier than most golfers realise, even if you don’t have an enormous amount of space available.
Choosing The Turf
The first step in creating a golf course is choosing the right kind of turf. This is more than just having the right grass – a lot of backyard golf courses are made with artificial turf. In fact, a lot of experts highly recommend using artificial turf. There are a lot of reasons for this, but essentially it comes down to long-term maintenance.
While there are special grasses available that are perfect for building smaller courses, they also require a certain amount of daily sunlight, airflow, fertilizers, and weeding. Artificial turfs remove all of this maintenance and cost and will only need to be repaired or replaced every few years. The great thing about modern synthetic turfs is that they are designed to resemble grass as closely as possible, all without the hassle of having to look after it.
Consider The Boundaries
If you happen to have a particularly large yard, it might even be worth installing a drive range so that you can work on your swing. But it’s also always important to keep your neighbours in mind when building in a longer drive range – golf balls can cause a lot of damage and can even be a hazard to the health of unsuspecting people or animals. This can easily be fixed by building a tall net, which is a lot cheaper to install than many people realise.
If your yard is small or you’re worried about errant golf balls, instead consider building a putting course instead. In fact, a putting course is advised as putting tends to be the most difficult part of the game, and what you should spend the most time working on. And it can be a lot of fun to design your own personal putting course that you have access to at any time of the day, or even just to sit in and read or play real roulette online.
Building The Course
After the turf has been installed, which can sometimes take a few days, now it’s time to start putting everything together. This ultimately depends on the type of putting course that you’re going for, but most course are comprised of rocks, shrubbery, sand, diggers, and more.
A golf hole digger is essential, as it allows you to put in post-holes around the course that are neat and even and take away a lot of the stress of digging by measurement.