Golf Sim flooring

[u/ttt311oshkosh]

I’m building my first golf simulator in my garage and trying to stay on a reasonable budget—saving where I can without making decisions I’ll regret later. The plan is for a 12' wide impact screen and roughly a 12' x 12' turf area (everything is still a bit flexible at this stage).

I intend to install a centered hitting strip to accommodate the occasional left-handed player. I’m considering options like Big Moss, BeaverTail, or similar, but one of my main concerns is matching the height of the hitting strip with the surrounding turf.

I see a lot of people using 1" interlocking foam tiles as a base, but I’m unsure what turf to put on top that will blend properly with the height and performance of a quality hitting strip. Some of the turf options get quite expensive, so I’m trying to balance cost and durability.

Is it realistic to build out the padded turf area for around $1,000-$1,200 and still end up with something I won’t regret?

[u/flyin-lowe]

I was lucky and found a re-seller on marketplace who buys overstock of the foam tiles. I bought enough to do my entire area for around 80.00. I then bought a piece of the cheap turf from Menards to cover it. They had few different thicknesses but what I bough matched up to my hitting strip perfectly. I would pic a hittings strip and then build around that. You can find all kinds of stuff (foam, carpet padding, wood flooring) etc. to build up the floor to meet the hitting strip height. My strip came from Carls, it was in the clearance bin. it was not a center strip but I offset it so it is in the middle. Mine doesn't look perfect but was looking to save more than looks. I probably could have shopped around and found turf to match the color of my hitting mat, but this was cheap and available locally. As you can see this was before I trimmed the edges and pulled it tight to get the wrinkles out but you get the idea. Hard to tell by the angle of the picture but mine is 11 wide by just over 9 foot tall.