PROJECT 1: Lockdown Necessity
With the Golf courses in my state locked down for the foreseeable future it was a must to have a net to continue to practice and refine my golf swing.
But as I was a little slow of the mark….by the time I jumped on line to order a golf practice net, anything of a reasonable quality was completely sold out.
Hmmm…what to do then? Well, I was looking for a project, so I thought why don’t I have a go at building one for myself.
I was able to procure some impact netting, and armed with and plan in my head, some basic materials, and lots of enthusiasm, I set to work on fabricating a frame that I could use the impact netting on.
I had 15 metres (16 ½ yards) of PVC pipe lying around. I bought a bunch of connecters at various angles, PVC adhesive, some bungee cords and cable ties. I was sure I could whip up something suitable.
A cut here, a slice there, a bit of adhesive and it was starting to take shape.
I’ve always been a bit of a fabricator. To start with an idea, flesh it out on the fly and adapt as I go along with a project.
I had a clear vision in my mind at the start for the project of what it should look like…the basic shape, and how that would affect function, but that needed to be adapted as I went along due to the limitations in connector angles for PVC pipe, and the inherent flexibility (too much) of the PVC pipe I had. But that’s part of the fun…at least for me.
I was also aware (or at least hoped) that the lockdown was only temporary, and once golf courses and driving ranges opened up that my home net might become somewhat obsolete.
As is often the case with fabrication jobs, I under estimated the amount of pipe I’d need so I had to purchase more. In hindsight knowing I needed to purchase more pipe I would have purchased a slightly heavier gauge / diameter for the entire project, but that’s the power of 20/20 hindsight.
Regardless the project started to take shape and relatively quickly. It was very satisfying.
I finished the basic frame work but wasn’t happy with the stark white of the PVC pipe particularly in contrast to the black impact netting, so of course I had to paint it black.
The carousel below shows the progression to a functional golf practice net.
The astute of you will have noticed the painters drop sheet hanging in the top left corner of the net frame work.
My impact net hanging procedure did not take into account hosel shanks, nor the extreme bounciness of the concrete pavers when topping a shot. So, I had to install a neighbourhood protection device i.e. the drop sheet.
I had plenty of impact netting, I just hadn’t thought through the process thoroughly. It easy enough to re-hang the netting to account for any wayward shots.
Out of expediency, economy and the fact that shops were sold out, I made my own hitting matt. I used some extra heavy-duty front door matting as base, and painted an alignment cross on it. And I bought a piece of heavy-duty artificial turf to replicate different lies and surfaces…. just for fun.
I bought some rubber practice matt tees on line and used a heated socket on a wrench to melt a neat appropriately sized hole in both matts to allow the tees to pass through and sit in snuggly.
And that’s pretty much it.
I wasn’t planning on posting my little burst of creativity otherwise I would have used a better camera other than my phone. So, the quality and orientation aren’t great, and the cinematography is lacking. But I’m sure you get the gist.
P.S. One thing I didn’t take into consideration was the impact resistance of the PVC to a straight on hit from a golf ball.
I fully expected (in my mind’s eye) to hit every ball into the back of the net.
As I’ve aged, I felt that my club head speed had dropped a bit. I was testing out a different shaft -a senior or A flex shaft – and discovered that I was still swinging with some gusto.
Due to the flex the head of the club was coming through impact a bit later than I normally expect, and so, the club face was open to path and I hit a lovely 5 iron off the toe and directly into the right rear upright of the practice net.
What are the odds that a toe ball would impact absolutely bang on the pipe? It made a lovely clean break right through the pipe. Fortunately, the way I added reinforcement to the structure using the bungee cords held it together nicely. I figured it would be an easy enough fix.
So, I swung again. Would you believe it…. exactly the same result…right off the toe, except that it hit the upright 2 feet higher than the previous, cutting out a nice neat two feet section of pipe. No amount of my tricky reinforcing was going to help it.
Phase two will be, replace the pipe, but this time I’ll brace it internally with some heavy aluminium extrusion.
Not only will that make it more resistant to impact, but as well, as add to the structural integrity of the net (I discovered that the sheer weight of the net was enough to cause the pipe to bend a little).