Absolutely. We have putting greens installed in the cold of Alaska all the way down into the heat of Florida and Australia. The panels are designed from a grade of plastic that’s meant to be in hot and cold weather. The turf of the Designer Greens and custom putting green builds are meant to be outside in all types of rain and cold weather. Cold, hot, leave it. As long as you want to, not an issue.

We would not recommend it. However if left outside, all of the panels will be fine, the main concern is the putting carpet. When the carpet becomes saturated with water it doesn’t dry quickly as we would like. If you get it wet, it’s okay. It’ll dry, but we would rather not see the carpet kept out all the time.

Absolutely not. On the Tour Links Put Master, it’s like a loose lay area rug put onto our panels. If you want to keep it a little more permanent, you can apply some double sided tape around the outer perimeter edge and keep it in place.

For the Designer Greens with UltraBaseSystems panels. Once the panels are installed the turf is then stapled around the perimeter edge as is the fringe, but you never want to staple the turf directly into the panels. The whole idea is that the panels are moving in and out, the turf is moving and we don’t want to have a lock joint that would cause a wrinkle. Only fasten the turf around the perimeter edge, not anywhere in the body of the green.

Expansion and contraction. We are always working to try to reduce the amount of expansion in the type of blends that we use in our plastics, but they are plastic. That means they expand when they are hot and they contract when they cool. So they move in and out on each other. In a cold environment, you would open the panels up a little bit more expecting expansion and in a hotter environment, you close them up a little bit more, knowing that they have already expanded.

What this means is that if you leave the gap when it gets hot in the summertime there’s room for it to move without the panels wanting to push and lift up. This is not an issue if the panels are going indoors because it’s never going to get that hot indoors. When you are outside and you are getting direct sun and heat. That’s when the gapping is most important.

We have two different types of turf. On our Tour Links Putt Master greens, it’s more of an interactive putting carpet. It is very quick, stimping at 13 or 14, which is way beyond what even a tournament player would see on a course. Our customers like it that fast because they are small greens and the ball rolls really true, and it’s really quick. You really can begin to watch your stroke and really begin to see good ball movement because it is so fast.

On our UltraBaseSystems Designer Greens, it is a rubberized actual back nylon.  A stimp around nine and a half to 10 and a half is typically what you will see on the Designer Greens.

Absolutely. Years ago we developed our own styrofoam contouring system. These are foam contours that go under the panels. Oftentimes people think they go under the turf. But, they go under the panels and the panels then flex and flow over top of these contours. We can do contours  like a little five foot contour by a three quarters of an inch or a 14 foot contour by two inches tall. This system is how we can make breaks in the big custom greens that are going into the schools, facilities, or even homes. It is all done with these precut styrofoam pieces. You may think styrofoam is very brittle, but it’s not when it’s in compression. When you build our panels on top of it, it allows it to flow with out snapping or breaking. We always say our panels will follow every contour that the USGA will allow.

People often ask if, what we call our bump rails on our panels, are added after the fact. No, our Tour Links panels have a certain number of panels that have the pre-molded bump rail edge as part of the panel. It is used primarily for residences, in the living room or basement and it keeps the ball in play.

On the Tour Links Putt Master putting greens they are about two inches tall.

On our Designer Greens, we have what’s called a regulation cup accessory. The regulation cup accessory allows us to utilize a four inch aluminum cup or even a six inch regulation cup to put a full flag in. The regulation cup accessory drops into our specifically designed panel and it allows you to use a deeper cup outside where you are able to excavate underneath where that cup is going to be.

We call it a floating cup assembly. We recognize that all the turfs out there on the market typically move somewhat in expansion, contraction, shrinkage and so on. We have seen too many times golf greens with turf “growing” over top of the hole, because it has shrunk back. This floating cup allows you to tap that cup into place, and so it’s always in the middle of that hole cut the carpeting. So it always is a pure, round hole and keeps everything looking really nice.

Absolutely. They can be installed by most people in 15-20 minutes and an hour for the bigger greens. It’s very simple. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle. Tour Links Putt Master greens really make it available for anybody to install it virtually anywhere.

Currently we have 18’ x 23’ and 15’ x 17’ sizes.

Well, it depends upon where you are.

What’s on the ground now, is it grass? Is it stone?

How does your area drain?

Is it flat, is it contoured?

All these things need to be taken into consideration. There is a level of ground preparation. You’re trying to create stability and you’re trying to create proper drainage. Now, if you’ve got an area where it’s relatively flat, that drains really well. It’s a matter of bringing in, maybe some fill material, creating some contours, like you’ve seen in some of the videos like we’ve done on the Ronald McDonald green and some others. But if you’re in a more difficult landscape and you’ve got to bring in material, or maybe even some cases build a retaining wall, to bring in some fill material to get to a level that works for you.

We want it to be compacted, hard, we want it to drain well, and we want it to be properly contoured or flat. Ultimately you will do far less ground preparation with a panel than you ever will in a traditional stone or rock and gravel base or a concrete base. It’s going to be far easier. But it really is going to depend upon what your existing environment looks like. Give us a call and we will be happy to discuss the proper ground preparation for your environment.

Yes, it can go outdoors. It can go on your lanai, on your porch, it can go in your backyard. I just don’t like leaving that product out in the rain day in, day out, like you would the carpet that is on our Designer Greens. The Designer Green turf is more of a blade type of grass, it’s meant to be outside. The Tour Links Putt Master is more of an indoor outdoor putting carpet, so if you’re going to get bad weather, if you’ve got it outside on your back deck or whatever, roll the turf up and bring it inside if you’re going to have a couple of days of bad rain. But we don’t like to see that turf stay saturated. It takes a while to dry. So bring it in if you’re going to see a lot of rain.

A Tour Links Putt Master green, is going to come UPS. it will arrive in boxes and some small tubes of turf, basically ready for you to take it to wherever, take it out of the box and assemble it.

A UltraBaseSystems Designer Green, is going to arrive in by an LTL carrier. That’s why we always ask the questions, where do you live? Restricted community? Do we need a lift gate to get it off the truck? The turf is 15 foot long, and a lot of panels will go on pallets. It is essentially like having freight arrive to your house. Which means the delivery driver will not take it to your backyard for you. They are going to drop it for you at the driveway and your job is going to be to get it back to where it’s going to go. So keep that in mind.

You’re putting down a putting carpet, something that’s about a quarter, five sixteenths or three eights of an inch tall, relatively thin turf, not like a sports turf that’s inch and a half or two inches tall. It is a fine piece of goods, it is meant to roll a golf ball very smoothly. Do you want to build that on a pile of rock that you’ve compacted down into submission with a plate compactor and then put this perfect piece of turf on it and hope to gosh that you don’t have a rock come up and stick up through the turf or somebody walks heavy and makes a dent. Doesn’t it make more sense to build on an interlocking, highly engineered, molded, perfect basis, and when it locks together creates perfect planarity, gives you hardness under foot and gives you great ball roll.

Just imagine going through all this effort of building this great stone base and your kid comes out there and misses a putt and slams that putter into that base and now you’ve got a dent and you’ve got no way to get rid of it, unless you pull that carpet back and fix that base. With the UltraBase panel or a Tour Links panel, that’s not going to happen. You’ve got that solid base there that you can trust to stay perfect. So that’s why we’re so big on our panel base as compared to a stone base everyday.

Yes. If you’re going to build wall to wall, it’s going to require you cutting the panels to fit in the areas the way our panels are designed. Also, you can cut them, take that scrap, spin it around and insert it again into another space, and cut it again to reduce your scrap.

You have the flexibility of having panels that are just going to go wall to wall, or you can use a foam transition to transition down to the floor because you don’t want to use a bump rail. You don’t want a trip zone. So you really have all these options. That’s why we designed it as a system that allows you to really maneuver it any way you want and create what you want. This is about you. This is your golf oasis. It has to be the way that you want it.

The short answer is yes.

We have been the star of the PGA merchandise show probably since 2008. Before UltraBaseSyatems and Tour Links started, especially Tour Links, truckloads of stone would be brought into the Orange County convention center in Orlando, which hosts the largest golf show of the world, the PGA Merchandising Show. That’s how every company would build the greens that were there. Dumped the rock and stone spread it on the floor, brought in the turf, just like they were building it outside. When we showed up with Tour Links, everything changed. Now, when you walk that show, probably 95 percent or more of every putting green in that entire arena is on a Tour Links or an UltraBaseSyatems panel, mostly Tour Links because it’s a great indoor system.

This goes for all of the major club professionals, ball professionals, grip professionals. Do you think a major manufacturer, who’s getting ready to debut to the world their ball of the year and their putter of the year, do you think they’re going to build it or demonstrate it on a green that is not the best possible grading that money can buy? Of course not. It’s their debut. Every golf magazine, every media outlet is there to see what they’re doing this year. So they’ve selected us since 2008 to be the place that showcases their product because we roll and perform as close to a high quality country club putting green as anything out there ever designed in the world.

Yes, we ship all over the United States, all over North America, all over the world.  We manufacture here in the USA, but we do distribute worldwide.

Tour Links Greens – It really depends upon the size. If you’re looking at a Tour Links Putt Master training aid, 20 minutes. If you’re looking at a 6’ x 12’, a half hour to an hour for a typical pre-packaged Tour Links Putt Master green.

Designer Greens – A good crew can go out there and do it in a day. Give yourself a nice weekend project by the time you prepare the ground, get the panels installed, the turf, and the fringe. And remember that the panels are coming to you precut, the turfs precut, the fringe is precut. You’ve got your fabric, your cups, even staples. So we’ve made it very easy. You just have to provide the labor. So make a nice weekend project out of it and you should see that’s plenty of time to get your own backyard custom green done.

Well, it really depends upon the turf that you put on it. Really holding the chip shot is about the amount of sand that you’ll put into the turf. The more sand the more it will deaden the ball. So if you are trying to hit a hundred yard shot into a designer green, You better be planning on putting as much sand as humanly possible into that turf, two, three pounds. If you’re looking to do a little bump and run shots, then not so much. You can basically allow the turf just to kind of guide the ball.

There are some great golf balls out there. And we’ll give a little shout out to Almost Golf ball. They fly great. They fly better than the whiffle ball, they hit that nylon turf, they’ll check up and back up. They’re great to hit in your backyard and if you shank it occasionally and hit the storm window where the plate glass window is it’s not going to break anything. Really fun to hit. A great thing to look at if you want to hit into a green.

Ultimately, if you’re trying to just hit long shots, you need to think about something. Do you want a putting green or do you want a target green? There are sandfill green companies out there that use and create bases out of stone and they also use us. But they put a lot of sand, maybe five, six pounds of sand and that’s how they hold shots, and they’re great. But if you’re just trying to do a putting green you really might not want that much sand especially if you’re doing it yourself. So think about that. Do you want a putting green or do you want a chipping green and you have to make those decisions about the infill amount.

No. When we first designed these panels we were screwing them together and bolting together every panel. We’ve learned a lot over the years, we’ve not made the mold change because it didn’t affect anything with the turf, but no we don’t need any screws on the panels.

Yes.

UltraBaseSystems panels do, there are drain holes all over the panels and liquid can drain through and under, they move water very rapidly.

Tour Links wasn’t designed really from the beginning to be outside. We figured it would just be used for making indoor putting greens and that would be enough, 20 years ago, that was the idea. Now it’s totally different, but they do drain very well through the seams on the panels. Then the water will leak out underneath of the panel and then either go into the ground or leak out if say you’re building on a rooftop.

Things like the stroke groover block, yes. But things like the string guides that clip onto the bump rails of the training aid aren’t designed to do that.

Sample

Honestly, we don’t have any. What we mean by that is that we have patented and have been building a reputation of this interlocking panel technology for almost 20 years. We are doing things that have never been seen before in the industry for 20 years.

It can, but then you’ve got to go into the world of custom and that means you’re to need some more panels and some more fringe. And you kind of break away from the purpose of the Designer Green. But yes, it can be done, you can order more turf,  more fringe and more panels and kind of merge this all together. But if you’re going to go that route, it would be best to look at this as a complete custom green to start with, but it can be done and you can do it.

For the Tour Links Putt Master products one to two weeks is standard. The Designer Greens typically take about four weeks to ship. We try to keep everything in stock, however if we are back ordered, you’ll be alerted to that.

We’re not going to tell you exactly, but it is really a high grade impact polymer, plastic. The panels are precision molded. They are all made in the USA from one hundred percent recycled material.

We have videos on our website that show all of this, but it’s really the same way you cut wood. Jigsaw, skilsaw, aggressive cutting blades they really cut very well. They are designed that when you cut them, you can spin them and then put the pieces back in to reduce waste, so it takes some woodworking skills and some tools.

Indoors for the Tour Links Putt Master. Vacuuming is the best way to go. When the green arrives, get it out in the sun if you can. Let it flatten out, the greens are rolled up. If it’s cold and winter where you are bring it inside and get it as warm as you can. But out in the sun they’ll flatten back quickly, and then bring them in and vacuum them. Vacuum them as much as you want. If you have pets walking on them, do it every day. You’ll see when you vacuum that you’ll a nap or grain. You’ll see it laid out one direction and be a little bit darker than the other. When you see it laying down, that’s the grain and that’s the fastest way the putt goes. We recommend vacuuming in that direction to get the best speed. To to clean the bump rail edges, things like Back to Black, Armor All, wipe it down with Fantastik will make it look nice.

Moving outside on a Designer Green. In time, you may see a little mold buildup or some dirt or leaves. Blow it off with a leaf blower, don’t take it right down to the surface because you could wind up blowing your infill out. A couple times a year, go in there and pressure wash it. Use a 40 degree tip don’t blast it, stand back with the pressure washer two, three feet, and it works wonders. Use a mild solution of Simple Green or similar cleaner, that works well as a detergent to wash it down and then pressure wash it down. You might need to add some sand to an outdoor green every couple of years just to fluff it out. But they are pretty easy to maintain.