Does 'mats only' really mean 'mats only' at your local golf course?

I should have known when I asked a seemingly innocuous golf etiquette question that it would turn into a passionate and sometimes even nasty social media debate.

The inspiration happened last Friday at my local course, Sandridge Golf Club, as I was getting in an hour or so of practice after dropping my daughter off at daycare. After a bit of early-week rain, the big sandwich boards reading "MATS ONLY" were posted at the range. No problem - the courses I grew up playing in Connecticut were essentially mats-only 100% of the time, and their artificial hitting areas paled in comparison to the plush ones Sandridge installed a few months ago to help manage the wear on its recently re-leveled practice tee, which serves golfers at the 36-hole facility and needs a rest sometimes.

After working my way through the bag, I did what I have done at practically every course with both mats and flat grass in front of them. When it came time to hit a few drivers, I stepped forward and teed them up off the turf. Again, this was learned behavior; I have always done this, having seen other golfers do the same for the thirty years I've been playing.

But then one of the assistants who helps run the course, with whom I'm friendly, called over to me to give me a little grief for hitting drives off a tee in front of the mats.

"Can't you read the sign?" he said. I could read the sign, I replied, but I was doing what I'd done for years: assuming "MATS ONLY" carried that carve-out for driver swings. And I wasn't alone; there were a couple of other golfers hitting teed-up drivers off the grass as well.

He didn't press the issue, making me feel like it wasn't a big deal. But the exchange sowed just enough doubt in my mind that I felt like tossing it out into the great, contentious 19th hole that is the App Formerly Known As Twitter.

What came back floored me - not just the volume of responses but the utter lack of consensus in the responses that rolled in. Dozens of golfers agreed that "MATS ONLY" generally comes with the caveat that it is acceptable to tee up a few drivers off the turf in front of the mats. Dozens more defended the letter of the law, as it were: "MATS ONLY" means "MATS ONLY" with no exceptions. If you want to hit your driver, you need to find a way to make a tee stick in the artificial turf - something that is usually difficult to impossible, in my experience, especially on contemporary artificial mats that don't have cut-out holes for rubber tees.

One interesting response came from one @byronwalkerfl. "I hate mats," he wrote. "I broke my left arm in seven places. Three surgeries, two pins and three screws. I'm hitting in front of the mat and if someone comes out and complains I just show them my scars." It is unclear whether his arm injury was the result of hitting a golf ball off of an artificial mat, but the apprehension about even attempting it after multiple surgeries stood out to me.

Other golfers recommended carrying the small plastic-lattice tees that are found at indoor fitting studios and golf simulator bars. I suppose this is an option, but aren't golfers' bags filled with enough junk these days?

The debate over driving range etiquette is entertaining in a vacuum, but it also points to a creeping game-wide problem. If a decent sample set of reasonable-minded golfers is so deeply divided over whether it's okay to step in front of the mats to hit a few drives at the range, what other, larger aspects of golf etiquette are becoming more contentious?

The post-pandemic golf dividend continues to benefit the industry financially, but there are more anecdotes and videos of heated on-course disagreements and even fights, not to mention the disgusting trend of social videos of golfers gleefully damaging courses, throwing clubs and engaging in other behavior that would make earlier generations ashamed. The backlash to this coarsening of golf conduct has prompted calls to #ShrinkTheGame, which are somewhat understandable even if they are not especially helpful.

The takeaway from MATS-ONLY-gate? Next time I'm at the range, I'll likely pause before I practice in front of the mats.