No special mat needed. LagKing works on carpet, putting mats, and putting greens. You need roughly 8 to 10 feet of runway for a comfortable stroke through the gate.

One thing we do recommend: a mat with a line printed on it. Every gate ships with an alignment jig that squares the gate to your putting line, and a line on the mat gives the jig something to square against. Without one the jig still helps and you will still be close, there is just a bit more eyeballing involved. It matters most in Start Line mode, where the whole point is measuring where you started the ball, so a gate sitting a few degrees off square shows up as a bias in your grades.

The gate measures ball speed with ~0.1% measurement precision. On a projected 30-foot putt, the measurement itself moves the number by about an inch. The distance you see is that measured speed projected onto a green of your chosen speed (stimp 5–15). Match the stimp to your target green and the number is the putt. The app also includes a built-in stimp tool to measure your own mat’s true speed, so your baseline is real, not a guess.

Every putt gets a start-line grade: Pure, Slight, Wide, or Major, plus the side you missed on. The grades are set by how long a putt that line would still hole. Pure would drop from 20 feet, Slight from about 7, Wide from about 4. We give you a grade instead of a decimal because how far that line would still go in is the thing you actually care about, and it is what fixes your stroke. Roll a few and you find out quickly whether you push, pull, or start it where you are aiming.

Sometimes, yes, and that is fine. Most golfers clip a side wall now and then. If your start line wanders you will do it more, and kids will hit the walls constantly, which is most of the fun of handing them a putter. Once your stroke settles you will roll through the middle without thinking about it, and the misses that do happen tell you something useful about your start line.

Getting hit by a putted ball is the job, not abuse. The firmware notices a strike, sorts itself out in about a second, and carries on. It will pick up marks, and it is meant to: scuffs from ball contact are what a used training aid looks like, and they are never a fault. If a putt ever does stop it working, that is on us: the 12 month warranty covers it, once in your term. It is built for the accidental hit, though, not for target practice, so please do not line up and fire putts at it to see what happens. That is where the cap comes from, and we would rather tell you about it now than at the point of a claim. And it is a putting gate: a full swing or a club strike is not putting, and that is the one thing the warranty will not cover. Full terms: lagking.com/warranty.

Then you hit a bad putt, and you will know it instantly.

A well struck putt rolls under the top bar without touching it. A ball that hops or skips off the face can clip it. We could have built the gate taller, but a hopping ball is not rolling, and rolling is what we measure, so a taller gate would only have produced confident looking numbers for putts we cannot honestly read. We would rather you get no number than a wrong one. This way there is no ambiguity: if you clip the top, that putt did not count, and you already know why.

Usually, yes. The free app on your phone or tablet (iPhone, iPad or Android) is the screen. It sits on top of the gate, tilted toward you, so you can read every putt from your stance. Leaving a screen off the gate is part of how it stays at $199.99. Pairing with your phone takes a few seconds.

For a bigger screen, open tv.lagking.com on a computer hooked to your TV and your phone becomes the controller. Or leave the phone out entirely: a computer can run everything at play.lagking.com.

Practice works with no internet or cell signal, so a basement or garage is fine. Matches against friends and the leaderboards need a connection.

No. Not now, not later. The full app is included with your gate: every mode, matches, leaderboards, and over-the-air firmware updates, at no recurring cost. We think charging you to use hardware you already bought is the wrong way to run this, so we don’t.

You do make a free account, which is what carries your history and lets you play against friends. There is no paid tier behind it. And if you ever sell the gate, there is nothing to hand over: the next owner just downloads the app.

Built-in rechargeable battery, charged over USB-C. Roughly 6 hours of active putting per charge, and it naps automatically between sessions.

One quirk worth knowing up front: the Founder Edition charges from a USB-A to USB-C cable, not from a USB-C to USB-C one. That is a limitation of the charging hardware in this first batch, and future versions of the gate will not have it. It is also exactly why we put a USB-A to USB-C cable in the box, so it is handled the moment you open it. If you want to leave a spare cable in your practice space, that is the kind to grab.

Ordering is not yet open. We are waiting on components and expect to open orders in early to mid November. We will publish the expected shipping window before accepting payment. Join the list to hear when orders open.

30-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked. If it doesn’t make your practice better, send it back within 30 days of delivery and we refund the purchase price (shipping is not refunded, and you cover return postage). Use it properly in that time. Scuffs and ball marks never cost you a penny of the refund; we just need it back in working order. Every gate also carries a 12-month warranty. Full policy: lagking.com/warranty.