A friend of mine put a driver into the top of his seven-foot net last summer and the ball cleared the frame, sailed over his own fence, and landed in the neighbor's pool. The net wasn't broken. Nothing was set up wrong. The net was simply too short for that club, and that's a thing nobody warns you about when you buy one.
Tall Enough For What, Exactly
Net height only means something relative to what you're hitting and where you're standing. A seven-foot net stops a full wedge from ten feet away without breaking a sweat. Put a driver in the same spot and the ball is still climbing when it reaches the mesh.
Ball height at the net depends on launch angle, ball speed, and how far you stand from the mesh. Stand closer and the ball hasn't peaked yet, which makes the net effectively taller. Stand further back and you're asking the net to catch a ball at the top of its flight, which is exactly when it goes over.
The Tape Test
Here's the check I run once a season and after any net change. It takes ten minutes and one roll of painter's tape.
- Mark your normal hitting spot on the ground, measured back from the net.
- Stick a strip of tape horizontally across the net at the height of your eyes, so you have a reference line.
- Hit five balls with each club, starting with the wedge and working up to the driver.
- Watch where the ball contacts the mesh. Above the tape with any consistency means you're one mishit away from a lost ball.
When I ran this on my own setup, wedges hit around knee height on the net, mid-irons around waist height, and the driver was inside a foot of the top edge. That last number is why I stopped hitting driver into that net entirely.
What To Do If The Net Is Short
- Move closer. Every foot you take off the distance adds effective height. It also sharpens contact feedback, so it's not really a compromise.
- Leave the driver for the range. Unpopular answer, but a driver into a short net is how you lose balls and, worse, how you start swinging defensively without realizing it.
- Step up to a taller frame. My $59.99 7x7ft net with the carry bag handles everything up to a 3-wood comfortably from ten feet. The $69.99 premium net with ground stakes has the same 7x7 hitting surface but a beefier frame, so it tolerates a full session of long clubs without the frame walking on you.
- Respect the sides too. Height is the obvious problem, but an off-center hit can leave through the side if the net is narrower than your miss pattern. My miss is a heel cut, which is why I keep the net angled rather than square to my target line.
How I Set Up Now
Everything lives ten feet from the mesh. Wedges and irons get full swings, the hybrid gets about eighty percent, and the driver comes out only when the tape tells me there's clearance. That sounds restrictive until you notice how much of a golf score actually comes from 150 yards in.
One more thing worth checking while the tape is out: the net's width. A tall net that's narrow will still let balls out the side on a bad miss, and my miss is a heel cut exactly like that. Angling the net slightly, rather than squaring it to my target line, catches those without changing anything about my setup. Two minutes of adjustment, and I stopped walking into the neighbor's yard to retrieve balls.
If you own a net and you've never measured this, do it this week. It costs a strip of tape, and it beats explaining to your neighbor why there's a golf ball in their pool.