Carls Premium Impact Screen

This is my review of the Carls Place Premium impact screen we choose to use here at our OTG golf simulator.

Carls is known for screens. They are the leader in golf impact screens. There were a small handful of other options but the quality, customer support and speed of shipping were our final deciding factors.

Carls Golf Impact Screen 101

• Made from three layers of heavy-duty impact resistant polyester
• Can take real golf balls up to 250 MPH
• Helps quiet the noise from the golf ball hitting the screen
• Lasts for thousands and thousands of shots
• Smooth surface to help project a high quality image (projector dependent)
• Available with grommets or without
• Available in three ‘qualities’ of screen. Premium, Preferred and Standard.

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Review

Six months in now our screen has held up fantastic***(weak point / install error exposed in month 6). We have a 16×9 premium screen and so far, so good. There is honestly hardly any noticeable wear on the screen and we have been playing regularly.

Late edit – we had our first casualty and major tear in the screen. I detail it below in the ‘Weak Point’ portion of the review. It is not so much a weak point in the screen itself, but it is a weak point in our design/install solution. The bottom edge with grommets is exposed and golf balls are firing into it. It eventually caused a rip. We have a solution to fix this issue (by protecting the bottom edge of the screen in the ‘danger zone’.

I’ve gotten a couple of marks and smudges on the screen now. I think it is when a player used a ball that had a sharpie mark on it. Not the screens fault in that instance, that was ours. Now I just buy a pack of the ProV1 practice balls and use those in the sim fresh out of the box.

Edit – One year update now reflected below in the review.

Edit 2 – Two year review now published with video.

Edit 3 – Three year update now published via video.

What Was Important?

When buying an impact screen your personal needs and wants certainly come into play. If you are using the screen as a theater room then image quality is of super importance.

However if you just want something that catches real golf balls and the overall image does not matter as much then you can get away with a less expensive solution. You do not even need a screen at all. You can hit into a net and have the simulator run on the computer screen.

I wanted a screen that looked great and was reliable. My research led me to Carls Place and their line of impact screens.

Here is what was important to me when choosing a screen for our golf sim.

• Durability – I wanted this screen to last thousands and thousands of shots (edit – I found our first point of weakness in the screen in the sixth month of regular use).
• Low bounce back – I wanted the ball to hit the screen, fall down landing on a ramp that sends the ball back towards our hitting mat.
• Looks – I wanted it to look good and really let us see the course as we played. I watched a lot of videos before deciding I wanted to build a sim and some of the videos the guys were hitting into what looks like a blanket or sheet that had bumps and worn out spots all over.
• Sound – While this wasn’t as important to us as we have the OTG simulator in a metal building about 50 yards from the house, the sound it makes when a golf ball hits the screen shouldn’t be to booming all the time. If this were in the garage or near a lot of neighbors, keeping the noise down would be a big plus.

A Weak Point / Our DIY Install Flaw – Grommet Holes on Bottom Were Not Protected (and caused a rip over time)

So the edge of the screen is covered by a black material that cover the grommets. Over the six months of regular use, some of our lower line drive shots hit the very bottom of the screen on this black part. A small section busted off after a line drive driver that hit directly on the grommet hole.

The damage was directly on a grommet hole but the screen was fine. Or so I thought.

This initial damage to the black vinyl edging happened six months after we began playing on the screen on a fairly regular basis. It looked like it was just cosmetic. I did not think about it posing as a weak point damage risk. I should have thought it through more and repaired the screen directly after the black portion of the outer edge broke off.

A few rounds after the initial damage to the black vinyl material another low line drive was hit directly into the grommet hole of the damaged area. The ball went straight through the screen at the grommet hole causing it to rip open up and down as pictured above.

This was our installation fault – not a screen fault. According to the Carls Place care instructions, the grommets should be protected around the entire screen. If you buy their custom enclosures there are padded foam barriers that they velcro to the edges to protect.

We left the bottom of the screen exposed and over time, low hit shots busted through.

The worm burner hit the metal grommet itself and it might have acted like a knife and cut right through the screen (I assume). A tear started at the bottom of the screen going up. This sucks.

There are a couple of fixes I am going to research and ultimately try.

First I reached out to Carls Place and asked them for advice. Within the next morning customer service replied and they are sending me a patch of the material that is about the size of a sheet of paper that I can have sewn in. I have no idea how to sew but I’m going to take a good look at it and probably reach out to someone with experience.

I have also tried some fabric/canvas repair tape and it seems like this may work for me. Because I also going to rotate the screen 180 degrees as the bottom of the screen takes way more damage than the top. Only the softer high shots hit near the top edge of the screen.

Screaming worm-burners light up the bottom of the screen every round. Next time I will be more apt to repair any broken black portions with some heavy duty black tape before continuing smashing drives into it.

I may look into a better bottom edge finishing option of my screen as well. I am going to build something that protects the low shots from hitting the bottom edge of the screen. We could try moving our ramp and seeing if it could act as a protector to low line drives.

Carls Place customer support = Top Notch

They reached out to me with a section of screen to sew the rip and gave suggestions to help fix the problem from happening again.

If you buy their enclosures instead of a DIY solution like I used, there are edge pads that you can and should attach around the edges of the screen to keep the grommets protected and out of the line of fire from direct hits with low shots.

Three Carls Screens – Premium Preferred and Standard

Honestly this was one of the most narrowed down decisions we had with our simulator after researching in the forums. Our choices were pretty much limited to which of the quality levels of Carls screen were we going to go with and if we were going to save some cash in exchange for months of wait time for a cheap option.

We could go with Carls and choose one of their three types of impact screen.

• Carls Standard Screen – this is the entry level screen and from most reports it works just fine. You will have less overall image quality, but the durability is there at the lowest price point. You can still use real golf balls and it takes hits from up to 250 MPH.
• Carls Preferred – the value line for home and even commercial locations. A much better woven screen for higher quality images.
• Carls Premium – the smoothest and best looking screen they make. Super durable with three layers of heavy duty impact material. Top quality images and a noise cushioning center layer. This is the one we went with for just under $1k USD.

The (potential) Hack to Get A Screen On The Cheap

So in my research on screens I quickly found the mega forum thread where a guy sourced an entire roll of the screen material for himself directly from the mill. He is selling cut sections at reduced prices in order to save himself and others money on the entire screen. The thread has over 2200 posts the last time I checked. It was started way back in 2016 but in 2020 it is still going strong.

• Check Carls Clearance Section Here

So how it worked was that you have an option to buy from an individual (dbgolf72) on the simulator forum who is a textiles expert. He researched and uncovered the mill that manufactured the screen that Carl’s and many other manufactures bought from and was able to place an order for a full spools worth (40 yards) in order to get the direct from the mill pricing. He bought the entire roll of material and sold off sections to dozens of members of the forum.

That first screen was great and everyone else wanted him to continue to offer the service. However this pissed off the commercial suppliers and the mill said they would not sell to him direct anymore. It cut into their bigger clients sales.

So at that point dbgolf72 didn’t give up. He went even higher up the supply chain and found someone to weave a custom screen which was the last run of material and are reportedly very high quality. The problem is the wait time and even getting on the list to get some from the next order.

I was looking at it a huge backlog of orders and it would take anywhere from four months to over half a year to get your order through this guy. You have to get on a list and you pay him and then pay for shipping and send it to him. The thread is so long and confusing as to what is what that we just bit the bullet and bought the screen direct from Carls. Plus we wanted grommets (the guy in the forum only provided raw) around the edge of our screen for ease of installation.

The real reason we did not go this route is that it would have taken for damn ever to get the screen from him and it would have put our build back many months.

If you want to go this route now then you need to ‘get on the list’ to be in his next order and keep an eye out for recent posts from dbgolf72. If you are willing to wait and go this route then you can save a significant amount of money on your screen. Click on the thread and go to the last few pages to see what’s the latest.

Competitors Impact Screen Providers

Other Brands and Competitors

There are other brands but we do not have personal experience with them.

• Protee Golf Impact Screen
• Par2Pro Impact Screens
• NetReturn – Impact screens and nets
• Allsports Systems
• Westcoast Netting
• Archery Netting
• The “Direct from Mill” forum thread

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Latest Update

5/14/2024 – Now 4.5 years in service (since January 2020) and the screen is still holding up but showing considerable amounts of wear. Especially noticable when the lights are on and we are not using the screen. When the lights and projector is on, the screen damage is barely visible (nice!). I plan to keep on using this screen until it rips a hole within the hitting zone or we finally get around to changing it out beforehand. I’d like to get as much use out of it as possible and I guestimate I can probably get another year or two before a hole is formed. The damage is 100% caused by high spin iron shots. It is most likely when we began using ProV1’s. Whenever I put the new screen in I plan to use ProV1 Left Dash’s for lower spin.