Stimp/Green Speed and Wind Settings

For all topics about the playing of Links, such as Swing Types etc.
Post Reply
Luenz
Posts: 29
Joined: March 5th, 2022, 11:13 pm

Stimp/Green Speed and Wind Settings

Post by Luenz »

Hello,

just another Question that might be answered several times (but not that summarized).

What Green and Wind Conditions do you all use .
Firmness/Speed and Wind!

Again, there are some Detail-Questions:

- Always the same?
- Roll the dice
- At every Course all options, or .... see next
- Roll it, but Pre-Select the possible Outcomes because of where the Course is (Desert less Wind, Links at least gusty and so on).
- Links at least Fast-Firmness etc.

I guess I didn't asked all the Questions, but I guess you know what I wanna know...

Kind regards
Derek
User avatar
MrT
Posts: 172
Joined: May 24th, 2021, 6:48 pm

Re: Stimp/Green Speed and Wind Settings

Post by MrT »

About 2-3 months ago, I made the decision that realism (or as much of it as possible) is the most important element to enjoy the game.

Level: Champ. (this has surprisingly increased my enjoyment of the game after 1-2 weeks of getting used to it). Tried to play without grid too, but some greens are nearly unreadable, unless I learn them by heart or at least check the camera every time.. I like my games (alone) to be done in 30-40 minutes. Some I can finish in 25 minutes as well and thus checking the pitch every time is a chore that I am not enjoying much. At least for now. If and when I retire, if the game will still be alive, maybe I will consider giving up the grid completely as well. I also use the Back Tees all the tiime and RTS for swing mode.

Green conditions M/Fc, or higher (that is a stimp of 11.3 or higher based on the revised table going around). If I can find the actual stimp, I try to go with that. For instance, Kapalua has a stimp of 10 and so I go for Mc/Mc. But I played it in M/Fc as well.

WInd: Gusty or Windy, but mostly Gusty. I may vary between Gusty and Windy and on rare occasion choose Breezy, but on Ocean courses, my experience is that there is always quite a bit of wind and I try to reproduce that. On courses like Whistling Straits I tend to go for Windy as that was my experience when I was there along lake Michigan.

Pins difficulty: mostly Custom... looking for a balance of 3 difficult, 3 mediums and 3 easy. Occasionally, I use all Medium or all Difficult pin positions.

Unfortunately, by choosing M/Fc as the minimum green conditions I have been forced to erase several courses (mostly from the older days, but not exclusively). In the beginning I was not happy about doing this, but now I feel good about it as they were just causing stress and they were no much fun.

Before that, for 1 year, I played Mc/Mc, but the visuals were slow vs. what I see on TV ,although faster than most greens I played on in real life on courses that were not set up for big games. I guess the conditions above are what allow me to enjoy the game the most.

No tournaments for me so it is irrelevant whether I play always at the same settings or not.
Given the choice, I always pick real courses vs. fictional ones. However there are 5-6 or even 7 fictional courses that are done so well and feel quite realistic that I will never avoid or get rid of.
Finally, I try not to play the same course more than 5-6 times a year to avoid learning it by heart. Some, like St. Andrews or Oakmont I played more often than that for they are my "training grounds".
Last edited by MrT on July 18th, 2022, 12:08 am, edited 2 times in total.
pmgolf
Posts: 1096
Joined: August 27th, 2019, 2:41 am
Location: near Richmond, VA

Re: Stimp/Green Speed and Wind Settings

Post by pmgolf »

Stimps:

The Stimp numbers shown are somebody's best guess. The additional Stimp numbers on some combinations are more of a consensus on what the Stimp should be for those Speed/Firmness combinations.
Stimps2.jpg
Stimps2.jpg (117.71 KiB) Viewed 2568 times
I tend to mostly agree with the new numbers, but based on the distances from my charts, I rank the faster conditions a little differently. What do you think?

Pete
Last edited by pmgolf on July 17th, 2022, 1:44 pm, edited 2 times in total.
migolfer
Posts: 189
Joined: October 21st, 2020, 2:40 pm
Location: Northern Michigan

Re: Stimp/Green Speed and Wind Settings

Post by migolfer »

Luenz wrote: July 13th, 2022, 7:20 pm What Green and Wind Conditions do you all use .
Firmness/Speed and Wind!
Here are my settings which I use on every course, every round, you'll notice that I am not adverse to getting a lot of game assistance. :)
Keeping these the same gives me a feel for the relative difficulty of all the courses I play. Not wanting to have to re-learn positions on the swing meter keeps me using the same setting too.

Code: Select all

Player:         Pro, Back Tees, Classic Swing
Auto Grid:      On, Large
Caddy:          On
Putting Asst.:  On
Break Line:     On
Wind:           Gusty
Green Hardness: Moderate(Challenging)
Green Speed:    Moderate(Challenging)
Pin Positions:  Difficult
Rules:          No: mulligans, gimmes; Yes: chipping on green
Views:          Top
I've tried Real-Time Swing with no top view, no grid, no putting assistant or break line in the past, but I don't want to have to work that hard. Seeing the slopes in a game on a 2D monitor is nothing like on a real course, so I don't bother. It's not like I make every putt with those game aids on, I have no problem 3 or even 4 putting sometimes. :)

The use of Gusty winds and difficult pin positions keeps my scores in the even-par range. I found that if play was too easy, the game became kind of dull, these two conditions alone keeps me honest now. I also moved to Moderate(Challenging) because putting was a little too easy in tamer settings. The trouble with a (Challenging) setting is that it ruins a lot of courses which have some nasty slopes on them, and I like playing any/all in the database (too many to ever finish playing). There are some pin positions which can require 8, 10, 12 shots to hole out.
User avatar
MrT
Posts: 172
Joined: May 24th, 2021, 6:48 pm

Re: Stimp/Green Speed and Wind Settings

Post by MrT »

pmgolf wrote: July 17th, 2022, 12:30 pm Stimps:

I tend to mostly agree with the new numbers, but based on the distances from my charts, I rank the faster conditions a little differently. What do you think?

Pete
Your numbers and the revised table's numbers look realistic to me. I cannot claim any scientific experiment, also because I would not know how to do it on a videogame, but I have spent hours analyzing my putting in Links on the greens at Oakmont and compared vs. the putting by pros also at Oakmont during the 2016 US Open. It is difficult to be sure for the course is quite a bit older than the 2016 course and one could be comparing oranges to pineapples. However, I found that M/Fc looked a tad slower than the putts at the 2016 US Open.. But, F/Fc looked a bit faster. Again, this was my perception. Considering that many a time I found that greens at Oakmont have stimps between 13 and 14, that would be reasonably close to the revised table of stimps or your table.. One of the problem is that in F/Fc, there are instances where the balls would run away with no hope to stop until they hit the fringes. More than F/Fc I found the game literally impossible to manage. That is all I know. Oh... and I also noticed that the fairways at the US Open at Oakmont in 2016 looked quite a bit faster than those in Links. Could be my impression, again, but somehow I doubt it.
dko
Posts: 138
Joined: August 19th, 2020, 4:26 am
Location: US West Coat

Re: Stimp/Green Speed and Wind Settings

Post by dko »

Those who find playing the same way every time boring are well above my skill level. I'm a classic swing, champ, breezy, m/fc kind of guy, and I play only real courses that are used on the PGA tour and are available on Links (except for the Hawaiian courses, which are too extreme for me). I also don't play courses outside the US (xenophobia anyone, and sorry Jimbo).

I use pin settings and yardages as specified on the PGA Tour web page going back to 2016 to the present. I am so inconsistent with my swing that I get a wide range of scores, from the very good (I once shot a 63 on the old Sawgrass course - bessermann's first - with difficult rough using the settings above, and an 80 under the same conditions on the same course.) :smile: )

I play against an AI that I've tried to set as competitive as possible with me over a four-round tournament (we're pretty close in results overall), and I enjoy it immensely.

We all enjoy the game differently, and I am sure there are those who find my preferences strange. And I keep thinking I should try out some of the fictional and fantasy courses out there, but maybe when (if?) I reach an age that allows for more experimentation I'll do that (I'm only 73).

Links forever!
Doug
User avatar
Adelade
Posts: 1346
Joined: August 27th, 2019, 10:24 am

Re: Stimp/Green Speed and Wind Settings

Post by Adelade »

Perhaps we're getting a little off-topic here, but I think its an interesting discussion.

For context: I came up with the numbers in what people seem to call the "revised table going around" (cant find the post now to link to, forum search is being unhelpful as usual, refusing to display it even though I know Im searching for the right keywords), based on measuring ball travel times per distances.

I want to say that I didnt measure all those conditions, I merely measured three different ones, which all consistently turned out with a stimp of 87% of the original table of stimps. So then I figured all ones would be 87% of those values and based what I called the "actual stimps" on that, without actually testing them all. So those numbers will only be accurate insofar as the original table was accurate for all values relative to eachother, which they may or may not be.

Therefore, I find pmgolf's numbers rather interesting, I wonder how you came up with them. It is very possible that they might be more accurate than the table I made for the reasons stated above. I dont know.

To answer the original post, I play with a wide range of settings within ones that I find most realistic, challenging and fun. I like variety, so I artificially create randomness with decisions of my own, without actual randomness.

For wind - I hate playing 'No Wind' because I find it deadfully boring, so I never do that. I have about an even mix of Breezy and Gusty, with about 5-10% of my rounds on Windy. I think Gusty isnt enough to simulate strong winds, it is much too easy to play Gusty pretty much the same as Breezy, and sadly I think Windy is a bit too extreme, I would really love a setting between Breezy and Windy that didnt fluctuate and spend such little time in-between the extremes the way Gusty does. Still, I find Windy very playable on certain courses that arent too punishing or narrow, and once in a blue moon it can be fun to use Windy even on tougher ones too. I use Windy much more often on linksland courses, because I feel like that is just part of the true experience.

For green settings, I've slowly gravitated more and more to faster settings, and nowadays I tend to vary between the following: S/Fc, Mc/Mc, F/Mc, Sc/Fc, M/Fc and F/Fc. I mostly favor M/Fc and F/Mc, but F/Fc is starting to grow on me a lot... I could foresee it becoming my favourite given another year or two. I really wish there was a setting with a speed in the relatively large gap between M/Fc and F/Fc.

I also wanna say I agree with MrT about fairways (and fringes) in Links playing slower (even much slower) than most fairways in real life.
Finished Courses - Main: Amedal (fictional), Nine Bridges (real)
Other: Austin, Sheshan, Kauri Cliffs, Le Golf Nat. Updates: Whirlpool, Royal Lytham, Royal St George's, Chicago, Chambers Bay, Munchen Nord E
Working on: 2 fictional courses + a couple things...
Post Reply