Golf net vs impact screen

Choose a practice net or a simulator impact screen by the shot you want to hit, the space you have and whether you need a projected image.

By the Garden Golf Kit team

A golf net is a practice catcher, usually in the garden or a garage, without a projected fairway. An impact screen is the hitting surface of a simulator, and it has to work with a projector, a room and, often, an enclosure.

Both stop a golf ball, but they are not interchangeable.

This page is the choosing question between those two setups. It is not a repeat of golf nets, cages and enclosures, which compares nets with cages, and it does not replace the garden golf net guide or the impact screen and projector guide.

Check the current price, and read the maker's instructions for the exact net, screen, frame and projector, before you buy.

What a golf net is for

A net is for hitting balls into a target that catches them. It suits full swings or shorter practice when you do not need a simulated hole, or when the space cannot take a projector and a screen. Most garden and garage nets are a frame plus a net, sometimes with a target sheet, and sometimes later boxed in as a cage.

The first limits are space, misses and the ground. Measure with how much space a golf net needs before you order a frame that only fits on the plan.

In the garden, also plan for wind and how the frame will be anchored, and for what a missed shot could hit. Garden golf and neighbours is the page for those misses, for noise, and for whether a more permanent structure raises other questions.

A net will not, by itself, show ball flight or a hole. Some people add a launch monitor later and still hit into a net. That is a different, more limited setup than a full simulator screen.

What an impact screen is for

An impact screen is a surface you hit towards while a projector puts an image on it. It belongs with a simulator: a launch monitor, a projector, a suitably dark and high-enough room, and usually side netting or an enclosure so missed shots do not hit the walls.

Ceiling height, a darkened room and a complete-room budget all have to work before the screen does. The screen is only one line on that list.

A screen also has optical jobs a net does not: the image has to stay readable, and the material has to be compatible with the projector and the hitting distance the maker specifies. Those questions live in the impact-screen guide, not in a net's product page.

If you mainly want to hit balls safely in the garden, a screen is usually the wrong first purchase. If you want to play simulated holes indoors, a net alone will not give you that image.

How to choose

• Choose a net if you want to practise ball-striking, you can site and anchor the frame safely, and you do not need a projected course.
• Choose an impact screen if you are building a simulator, you have the ceiling height and darkened space, and you have budgeted for the projector, enclosure and launch monitor as well as the screen.
• Choose a net first, and wait on the screen, if you are still testing whether you will practise at home at all, or if the only space you have is a garden that cannot take a room-style enclosure.
• Do not treat a garden net as a simulator screen, and do not treat a screen as a substitute for side protection it was not designed to provide.

Check the current price for the complete setup you intend to use, not only the net or the screen on its own. If a more permanent enclosure or outbuilding is part of the plan, check planning rules with the Planning Portal's outbuildings guidance for England, or with your own planning authority if you are elsewhere, rather than assuming a garden structure is automatically permitted.