Irons at driving range

Hello, I'm not exactly a beginner, since this is my third season playing golf, but since I haven't really improved since taking up the game, I'll continue to classify myself as a beginner.

When I go to the driving range to practice, as I do fairly often, there is the usual choice between real turf as astroturf mats with rubber tees. The real turf area, however, gets pretty chewed up, to the point where it is difficult to find a level patch of grass. The main thing I want to work on is my irons, all of them. I see some people hitting with their irons off the astroturf mats. My question is this: Is it "better" to practice with the irons on actual turf, no matter how chewed up, or is there reason to practice hitting with the irons on the astroturf?

You do need some grass under your ball to get some useful practice time in. Go to the far end of the grass area - you may have better luck if it is quite a distance because a lot of people won't walk that far down, they just grab the closest spot.

Always simulate course conditions. Do you play a course that has astroturf fairways? NO. why practice on them. If it is hard to find a fresh peice of turf, take some tees with you and tee your ball. It is completely unnatural to practice on astroturf.

Of course it is always better to practice off grass, however this is not always possible especially in the Uk winter so we have to use mats.

My only suggestion is when using mats use a very small tee just to raise the ball off the mat to ensure ball "mat" contact, I restrict myself to 5 iron to woods off mats because you would take less divot with long irons and woods.

It's always good practicing hitting driver of mats. (using a tee of course).


Ian.

In general, when do you need to use the tee? I am playing only on mats at this point and still using a 7 iron mainly...

Thanks for the replies. My general approach has been to practice off turf if possible, even though sometimes that means looking for little patches of grass to place the ball on. I only wondered if there might be some benefit to hitting iron shots off the mat, since I see plenty of people doing it--maybe the idea is that if you can hit them off the mat you should be able to hit them off the fairway.

I have a hybrid 3 iron and some sort of "utility" wood with 21* of loft (no number on it), and I've practiced with these off the mat and off the chewed-up turf, but it doesn't matter; I've yet to manage a shot with either one. With irons at least I occasionally connect--maybe 10% of the time. If I didn't I guess I would've given the game up by now.

I usually hit long clubs exclusively on the range. I usually just go there to work out kinks off the tee, that is what i suggest for mats.

To tell you the truth it doesn't really matter mats or grass. If you are going to the range to practice then you need to concertrate on building muscle memory, you want to build a repeative swing, this can be done on or off mats it doesn't matter.