Won't ruin your mat.
Synthetic hitting mats are two layers: grass on top, dense rubber underneath. Standard tees cannot insert. Spike-based tees groove the grass over time. We sit on top.
Hitting mats are not grass
A hitting mat is a sandwich: a synthetic grass fiber layer bonded to a dense rubber underlayer. The grass is too floppy to hold a wooden tee upright. The rubber is too hard for a wooden tee to penetrate. So wooden tees are out. Plastic tees are not much better.
The standard workaround is a rubber tee with a stiff base. It works, but it cannot be made adjustable to real-club heights, and the base "tracks" over time (grooves the synthetic grass where it sits), which is why simulator mats start to look beat up after a year.
Our tee sits on top
No penetration. Five splayed supple TPU feet wider than the cup distribute the load across a 50mm-diameter footprint. No spike grooves a single fiber. The mat lasts longer.
Supple matters two ways
First, on insertion: the feet flex to conform to whatever fiber texture your mat has. Second, on impact: if you skull a low strike and the club face contacts the cup, the tee deforms instead of transferring the shock to your club face. TPU 95A is the sweet spot: firm enough to stand upright with a ball on it, soft enough to bend instead of crack.
Tested mat compatibility
We are validating against the most common simulator mats: Cimarron 4x5 Super Tee, Fiberbuilt Studio, Rawhide, SkyTrak's own mat, Phigolf, and the budget Amazon mats with no brand name. The footprint design is robust across all of them. We will publish the specific test report once the prototypes are in hand.