[Disclaimer - we at Kaizen Golf do not sell these mats and we do not get paid commissions/incentives when you buy this product]
Strike is King!
Strike is king in golf - we've all heard this. In the age of hi-tech golf launch monitors, traditional golf coaching purely focused on hitting textbook positions is being superseded by coaching which is based on improving how your golf club interacts with the golf ball and the ground at impact.
Yet being able to accurately measure strike is hard - and let's be honest, very expensive. You can't really get club/impact data unless you have a top of the range launch monitor like a GC Quad. Most products in the personal launch monitor bracket have very limited capability in terms of measuring strike (e.g. my Skytrak unit).
The Acustrike Golf Mat is one such product which claims that it has this problem cracked.
The basic idea of this product is that it's a golf hitting strip which uses micro-fibre technology to capture an imprint of how the golf club is coming into the ball, and will provide feedback such as low point, swing path and centred strike.
This was probably one of the most heavily marketed product on social media where pretty much all golf 'influencers' had done a review of this product and the vast majority of them were very positive.
It also won the 'Best New Product" category in the 2019 PGA Merchandise Show - so what's not to like about it?
Naturally I had to give it a go and find out if this product can help my golf game!
First Impressions
As I intended to test it indoors with my Skytrak I purchased the indoor Acustrike Mat from their Australian distributor for $140. There's also a cheaper but thinner outdoor version which you can put on top of your lawn.
The thing which struck me about the product first even before I opened the package was the fact that it was SUPER LIGHT! Checking the postage label revealed that the product weighed less than 1kg.
Being in the golf mat business, this was much lighter than what I was used to for this size of mat.
Opening up the package, it was pretty evident why it was so light. Instead of using a dense foam base, the base of the Acustrike mat was made of something that looked more like sponge - see photo below of how it compares with our 3 layer mat. Immediately the durability question came into my head - more on that later.
Of course the selling point of this golf mat is not it's base, so let's get to the top hitting surface.
The top of the mat is made of velvet-like micro-fibre material which has 'grain' built into it. So when the golf club hits it against the direction of the grain, it will make an imprint of how the clubhead brushed against the mat. You then just simply brush the club with the grain in the opposite direction to 'erase' the imprint. Pretty ingenious. I brushed the mat a few times with and against the grain with my hand and the imprint was pretty visible and accurate.
There are also some markings which will help you to determine strike.
- A dot which tells you where to place the ball, by fixing where the ball is struck from, you will then be able to get feedback on strike relative to this point.
- Some markings to indicate where ideally your club should be interacting with the mat.
Test Results
Using my trusty 7 iron and my Skytrak launch monitor, I tested how accurately the Acustrike mat can provide feedback on impact in terms of centre strike, low point and club path/direction.
Centre Strike
The theory is that by looking at where the strike imprint is in relation to the ball, you should be able to deduce whether you've hit the ball off the toe/heel or dead centre.
Using my poor man's HMT a.k.a foot spray, I tested how effectively the Acustrike was able to measure strike location.
The result was actually very promising!
Photo above shows a toe strike where the Acustrike mat also clearly showed that the imprint was heavily on the toe side. The ball flight from this shot is also shown above.
Compare these to a more centred strike (see below). The marking from the club face again closely matched the imprint on the mat (centre/slight toe). Though there wasn't a lot of difference in the resulting ball flight/ball speed (1 mph) - obviously there are many other factors which influence ball flight and the modern golf clubs are becoming more and more forgiving.
So Acustrike Golf Mat does pick up heel/toe/centre strikes.
Low Point
Let's now find out how well the Acustrike picks up fat, thin and 'pure' shots.
Here are some examples of where shots felt fat, thin and flushed and how they looked on the Acustrike as well as their ball flights.
Fat shots
These had a lot of the imprint behind the ball and tended to look 'darker' in colour.
there was a big loss in ball speed and carry distance against my normal 7 iron numbers which are all typical of heavier shots.
Thin Shots
Thin shots show up as a really light brush against the mat. The resulting ball flight again shows a significant loss of ball speed, launch angle, height and distance - again typical of those 'wind cheaters'.
Good Shots
Perhaps this was the most interesting finding. Below are results from what I felt was a very solid hit - with good ball speed, spin, height and distance numbers.
But when inspecting the 'divot', there seemed to be a 'tail' behind the ball. Definitely not 'ball first then turf' strike?
So from that point on, the test was more to see if I could produce the 'ideal' pattern on the mat by trying my hardest to hit ball first then turf/mat , and many many balls were hit...
Below was as close as I could get to the ideal pattern, and as you can see, it still had some 'room to improve'.
There was a bit more gain in terms of ball speed. But more interestingly, there was a pretty significant reduction in the launch angle when compared to my normal numbers (17 degrees vs ~21 degrees), which would suggest a bit more deloft at impact which I believe is a good thing.
I also noticed that the better the strike, the more my spin numbers got closer to 6000 which is what the Skytrak 'optimiser' wants to see.
Time allowing, I plan on visiting coach 'YouTube' to see if I can improve on this.
Club Path/Direction
Finally I tested how 'left/right' swing direction/path would show up on the Acustrike mat.
Right
Right swing direction was picked up and in this instance the ball flight was a push draw.
Left
Again the left path was picked up and the flight was a tiny fade. I actually though I had swing the club way left, but that didn't seem to be the case in reality.
My thought on this is that although the swing direction/path was picked up, there was no way of telling which way the club face was pointing at impact to fully get a feel for ball flight.
If you are working purely on swing direction and are looking for something to marry up "feel" and "real", this could help, but if you are working on direction or shot shaping indoors or into a net, the Acustrike will not help a whole lot.
Durability
I thought this was another aspect to point out. As mentioned before, I did have some doubts about the durability of the product - for $140, you want something that will last a little while.
So after a session hitting ~150 balls, I noticed a couple of things -
- The top hitting surface is starting to come apart from the base (see photo below)
- The impact zone is no longer flat - looks like the repeated hits are starting to cause some issues with the shape of the sponge material below. The impact from this issue is that the ball could not easily sit on the white dot anymore.
Although these are only small issues and I'm sure I can still use this for many many sessions, these observations are telling me that it's probably not a great idea to use this as your main golf mat.
Final Thoughts
So that was my test of the Acustrike Golf Mat, here are some of my final thoughts
- The Acustrike Mat is great for practicing ball striking - you get really good feedback on heel/toe/centre strikes as well as low point. You can also get similar results from using face spray/foot spray, but it's more work as you need to re-apply the spray every few shots as well as the fact that you will end up with lots of white residue everywhere.
- Using the mat for path could be misleading if you don't have access to ball flight data.
- I would consider this mat as more of a training aid than a golf hitting mat as I personally don't believe it will last as long as a golf hitting mat with repeated hits.
Here's what I plan to do next
- I'm going to experiment with 'teeing' the ball up on the mat to see if this makes a difference in terms of low point control.
- I'm going to consult with coach YouTube on drills/concepts to improve low point control.
If I come across any interesting results with these I will definitely share those with everyone.