With golf season now getting underway in earnest, many putters are being dusted off from winters of disuse; a plague that perhaps puts holes in one’s putting game (no pun intended!) more than any other aspect of the game. There is nothing worse for one’s consistency in putting than taking six months off, with nary a single putt taken for practice in the interim.

Of utmost importance in brushing away the rust of the winter is to enact a serious regiment of training, and there is no easier way to do so than to have one’s own putting green on the yard for both ease of access and practicality in getting up to speed with the greatest of ease. Yet many putting accessories from the big sporting goods retailers are nary more than a roll of Astroturf rolled out, kinks and all. Hardly a recipe for realism in putting in Spring and Summer greens at your local club!

So Tour Links’ extensive line of putting greens are a Godsend for gearing up one’s putting for the season ahead. The greens come in several configurations of varying sizes, with a model to fit any yard or garage, and offering excellent all-weather performance such that the greens can be set up and used indoors or outdoors as space permits.

We recently tested a four foot by 12 foot configuration that provided us with excellent mid-range putting practice and a space that did not take up our rather diminutive suburban back-yard (think postage stamp). While the putting green’s arrival portended a rather intrusive set up (the components and turf exceeded 100 pounds in shipping weight), when unpacked the components betrayed their expected weight and size.

Indeed, setup of the four by 12 configuration was an absolute breeze, with no need to consult the manual before-hand, aside from taking a quick glance at the picture of the completed project for a visualization of how it should look. The component pieces of the putting green resembles a preschooler’s jigsaw puzzle, with the pieces fitting together in such obvious fashion that the 15-minute setup was, if anything, generous in its timing. Even the non-mechanically-inclined (myself firmly entrenched in this group) will be able to put the green together in only a few minutes, a rare accomplishment when it comes to manufacturer suggested time-lines (try putting your IKEA dresser together in a quarter of an hour to see what I mean!).

The included turn rolls on the completed framework, held in place solely by its rubber sole and the placement of the two holes on either end of the green. We found that the green hardly shifted, despite being trodden on rather regularly over the course of our two or three week putting training. The turf is reasonably life-like, albeit extremely fast, which is clearly a characteristic of every artificial green on the market. There is no life-like product that closely approximates the real thing, and Tour Links’ design provides a reasonable enough facsimile of the truth.

The system also allows for placement of zones of break in various locations with foam padding placed directly underneath the green, and easily moved from place to place as you experiment with various degrees and locations of break. My largest complaint in the package is the flatness of the included foam pads – they really do not provide accurate breaks on the green, as they are neither high nor long enough to provide the large-scale contour that a real green always provides. However, I can see that the enterprising user will substitute other materials to provide for better break performance, with almost any household foam providing a use under the mat for different degrees of break.

This quibble aside, Tour Links’ green is about as close to the real thing as is currently available for the home market. Combined with the incredible ease of setup in its modular construction, literally anybody can set up this green and be up and practicing in minutes. The system does not necessarily come cheap, ranging from $299 to more than $5,000 for a 14 by 20 model, with a wide variety of price-points between these extremes, depending on size and configuration. But when stacked against the department store variety of off-the-shelf putting surface and its relative pricing, the value in a real green is obvious. So dust off those cobwebs from your putter before even thinking about hitting the links this Spring – Tour Links’ putting green will quickly put you in mid-season form before you stroll onto your first real-life green of the season…