The GoSports Elite is the hitting mat to buy if you have the floor space: five feet by four, with 15 mm turf and enough area that you stand on the mat rather than beside it. If you want to practice more than one lie, the Champkey Tri-Turf gives you three surfaces in a portable size. Our budget pick is the Champkey Heavy-Duty pad — the cheapest honest way to start hitting balls at home. And whichever you buy, add rubber mat tees: wooden tees do not go into a mat.
Our hub already ranks nets and mats together on best golf practice nets and mats, because most people buy both at once. This page splits the mat out, because the mat is where the decisions are, and because the two specs that matter — hitting area and turf depth — get lost in a page that also has to talk about netting.
Turf depth, and the injury nobody advertises
A real fairway gives way. A club that arrives slightly fat takes a divot and the turf absorbs the energy. A thin mat on a concrete garage floor does the opposite: the club bounces, the shock travels up the shaft into your hands, and you feel it in your lead wrist and your lead elbow. Golfers call it mat elbow and it is the single most common reason a home setup gets abandoned after a month.
Two things prevent it. The first is turf depth — more fibre between the clubhead and the base, which is why a published figure like 15 mm is worth paying for over an unstated one. The second is what the mat sits on: a rubber-backed mat on a carpeted floor or a sheet of plywood with a foam underlay behind it is far kinder than the same mat on bare concrete. Neither of these is a product claim. They are the physics of the thing, and they are why the cheapest pad here is listed as the way to start rather than the way to practice for years.
Hitting area: do you stand on it?
This is the spec most buyers get wrong, because it sounds like a convenience question and it is actually a swing question. If the mat is only big enough for the ball and your stance is on the floor beside it, you are swinging from a surface that is one or two centimetres lower than the ball. That changes your low point, and you will groove a compensation for a lie you will never face on a course.
A mat around five feet by four lets both feet and the ball sit on the same plane, which is the whole reason to pay for the bigger one. A small pad is fine for a chipping drill, a launch monitor session where you only need carry numbers, or a bay where you already stand on turf.
Published specs, side by side
Live prices for each mat, with a per-row buy link and the date each price was checked, are in the Quick Picks table above. Where a listing does not publish a turf depth, we say so rather than estimating one.
| Mat | Size | Turf depth | Stance on mat? |
|---|
| GoSports Elite | 5 x 4 ft | 15 mm | Yes |
| Champkey Tri-Turf | Portable, three turf panels | Not published | No |
| Champkey Heavy-Duty | Compact pad | Not published | No |
| Rubber mat tees (9-piece) | Accessory | n/a | n/a |
The three-turf question
A tri-turf mat gives you a fairway-length panel, a rough-length panel and a tee panel in one portable mat. It is genuinely useful for one thing: learning how differently the ball comes out of thicker grass, which is a shot most amateurs guess at. It is not a substitute for a full-size mat, because none of the three panels is big enough to stand on, and the seams between them are not somewhere you want to catch a club.
Buy it as a second mat or as a travel mat. Buy the five-by-four as your main one.
Why rubber tees are not optional
A wooden tee needs ground to go into, and a mat has none. Every mat here either includes rubber tees or has holes for them, and a nine-piece mixed-height set costs less than a sleeve of balls. Mixed heights matter more than they sound: our best golf tees page covers the published MyGolfSpy tee-height test, which measured about 14 yards more carry from a 1.5-inch tee than a 0.5-inch one with a driver. If every practice swing at home is off a one-height rubber plug, you are rehearsing one tee shot.
What to buy in what order
- The mat, sized to the space you actually have. Measure the ceiling too: a full driver swing needs considerably more height than people assume.
- Something to hit into. A net, or a garage wall you are prepared to replace. Our nets and mats page ranks the one net in our catalog.
- Rubber tees in mixed heights. Cheapest item on the list, and the one that makes driver practice representative.
- Numbers, last. A launch monitor turns hitting balls into practice, and our best launch monitors page starts well below what most people expect. Our are cheap golf simulators worth it page is worth reading before you spend on software.
And one thing to skip: do not start with the most expensive mat you can afford if you are not yet sure you will use it. A cheap pad and a net in the garage for one winter tells you whether you are a person who practices at home. Most people find out they are not, and the honest version of this page says so before taking your money.
Already own a net? Our best golf hitting matspage ranks the mats on their own, on published hitting area and turf depth — the two specs that decide whether home practice helps you or hurts your wrists.
The mat is the part of a home build people under-spend on and regret. Our best golf hitting mats page covers hitting area, turf depth and why a thin mat on concrete is the one purchase here that can injure you.
Shopping under a hundred dollars? Our best putting mats under $100 page applies that ceiling to the live feed, which turns this into a straight choice between mat length and surface speed.
If putting is where your shots are going, start with the surface rather than the aid. Our best putting mats under $100 page ranks the mats worth owning, and the pressure trainer here needs one to be worth anything.
Comparing against a SkyTrak specifically? Our SkyTrak alternatives page sets out what that unit is known for and which of these five delivers the part of it you actually wanted.
If the unit you had in mind was a SkyTrak, our SkyTrak alternatives page covers the cheaper routes to spin data and simulated rounds, and our best golf hitting mats page covers the surface every build needs.
Both of these come up most often as SkyTrak substitutes. Our SkyTrak alternatives page puts them alongside the three radar units with their own screens, with the published specs for each.
