Putting on a Golf Simulator: How It Works and How to Make It Feel Real

You can hit drivers into a screen all winter, but the putter is still the club that decides the card. You can putt on a golf simulator, as long as the launch monitor reads putts and the software knows what to do with them. Here's how simulator putting works, which setups do it well, and the turf, mats and lighting that make it feel like a real green. Quick summary Camera launch monitors beside the ball read a putt at impact, so they handle putts better than radar units, which sit 1.8m to 3m behind the ball and have to track the roll. The Square Golf launch monitor, at £689, has a putting mode with adjustable green speed and short, medium and long putts to practise. When the software has no live putting, it putts for you: Garmin's Home Tee Hero gives the R10 its putts based on how close the approach finished. GSPro sets green speed on the stimp scale, with 10 as its default, and has gimme circles and auto-putt. Our putting turf comes off a 4m-wide roll at £24 a square metre, so a 5m length, enough for a 3m by 4.5m bay, costs £480. A dedicated putting simulator, the ExPutt RG at £389, plugs into your TV and tracks 7 putting measurements without a full simulator.

Can you putt on a golf simulator? Yes, as long as your launch monitor can read a putt and your software supports putting. When both are true, you make a real stroke, the ball rolls off towards the screen, and the software plays the rest of the putt out on the virtual green, break and all. When they aren't, the software putts for you. Either way, simulator software gives you 3 ways to finish a hole:

Putt it out. You hit every putt and the launch monitor reads each one. The most realistic, and the slowest.

Gimmes. Anything inside a set distance of the hole counts as holed, so you only putt the ones that matter.

Auto-putt. The software gives you a number of putts based on where your approach finished, and you walk straight to the next tee. You can mix them: putt out when practising, gimmes when 4 of you are playing a round on a school night. How does putting work on a golf simulator? It comes down to how your launch monitor reads the ball. The software only draws what the launch monitor tells it, so a putt the launch monitor can't measure is a putt the software can't show.

Camera launch monitors and putting Camera units sit beside the ball, across from you, and photograph it at impact. Ball speed and direction off the face are what the…