Links Corner Forum

I applaud you for being willing to try this heavy task, Adelade.

These are the kind of things that get me way more interested in the game than having 500-1000 courses.

You just confirmed something that I had concluded on my own about 1 month ago, i.e. fairways firmness play faster or slower based on firmness selected for the greens. As I do not create courses, I kept my conclusion to myself since I cannot do anything about it. I did not do any specific experiment, but I hardly ever play the same course more than 1-2 times a month and I am a keen observer. After all it was my attention to details, even the tiniest one, that took me to a reasonably long career in Wall Street and the City. Hence, as I go through a lot of courses, I noticed the similarities and the differences. As I never play slower than Mc/Mc, I have nothing to add to your references below this setting. I am not saying that they are identical, but they surely feel almost that way.

On greens, some recent events in my playing convinced me (meaning that nobody can convince me otherwise) that different courses play the same green conditions differently. It is again the fact that I change course every game and I have seen myself going from playing a course at -8 with great putting to the next one where I barely broke Even and despite the greens were much less challenging. What happened? Simply the M/Fc conditions played very differently for whatever reason. My last game at Princeville, had me checking the green settings 3 times, for the same M/Fc was so slow that 4 times I did not even reach near the cup! Princeville is an old game (2003, I think), nice but barely acceptable for realism. The green settings were right, but if I hit the ball like that at the Brabazon at Belfry, I would send the ball running out of the greens and into the fringe or among the spectators even. The differences were too large not to notice that. So, as you wrote, there must be something in the textures that means something.

I got to the point that I do not mind too much even the Mc/Fc or F/Fc. Unfortunately, at those settings there is nearly always the 1, 2 or 3 pin placements that kill the game, something that pisses me off immensely and thus I avoid those unless in practice mode. Truth be told, to play these latter conditions, I can no longer go to a course and expect to play -5 or -6 like it happens right now in M/Fc from scratch, because if I do not know the different areas of the greens then I am in trouble even without unplayable pins. A stimp of 12 would be fantastic and it would pretty much write "the end" words, for me at least. Only place I play Mc/Mc is St. Andrews for I read that the stimp there is around 10. Kapalua also has a stimp of 10ish. All others I am M/Fc or Mc/Fc these days.

I also came to the conclusion that Easy/Medium/Difficult for pins mean very little. Some difficult ones are actually easy and they are just closer to the fringes. Some easy ones, maybe in the middle but, a somewhat less than beautiful mind" placed the cup along a ridge, or just next to a small cliff which makes the easy position a myth, a fantasy.

Wind I manage. I agree with you that the wind (and I never play below Gusty) is far from perfect. While I am pretty good with my driver (even after switching to Champ and giving up the power meter) there have been a few recent instances where the headwind was so strong that I could only manage 220-225 meters drives which were not enough to reach the fairways!!! With Gusty I can wait and after a bit the wind will subside. With Windy I am in trouble as it will never give up.

I think that if you could do what you are planning, that would truly be fantastic, simply fantastic. Probably the best things to happen to Links in many years.

I still wish that we could get a bit more distance from clubs, but I know that to be a moot question. The new courses being produced, reproduce the lengths of the most recent courses, but clubs' power is stuck to another era, basically the early 2000s, However, if you could have your ways with fairways, we could gain perhaps a lot more rolling yards (often balls stop too quickly in my opinion vs. the real life courses) and offset at least partially the problem of having to play with outdated clubs. In Links there will never be a 400+ meter drive. I tried on the most generous (dowhill holes) and I could reach at best 378 meters. And that was in practice, with perfect swing, perfect tailwind, perfect roll, etc.. pretty much. On most holes even 300 meters is quite rare.

Very grateful for what you plan to do!

Glad to hear And I much enjoy reading your thoughts/experiences.

First - I will have to say that I disagree about the 'different speeds on M/Fc on different courses' part though. I have not played the same rounds you did and didnt see what you saw (I dont have Princeville, and dont care to purchase it just for the sake of this), so who knows - Im not saying "you're wrong", but I will admit that I think you must be mistaken. I know you said you wont be convinced, and thats fine, Im not trying to convince, just to share how I see it.
1. Logically, what you're describing doesnt really make sense. All my insight I've been able to gain into how APCD and Links works in this regard tells me that it simply should not be the case. To begin with, there is no reason for them to program it like that. Yes, you could argue that many things dont make full sense in APCD and Links and therefore it could be some type of mistake on their part, and Im not denying there is always some possibility for something like that, but I have a hard time seeing it in this particular case. Mostly because, if it was like that on some courses, I feel like it wouldnt just randomly be on a very select few courses, it would be a widespread problem, and then it would be a well-known phenomenon by now.
2. My experience and feeling about it is completely different from yours in this sense. I have played over 900 rounds (according to Links itself) since 2018 (I know many people have probably played much more, but its enough to perceive a lot from) and while I like variety in conditions and courses, I bet at least two thirds of those rounds were on either M/Mc (my old favourite that I no longer touch), Mc/Mc , F/Mc or M/Fc (I've never played a full round using the "Course Setting"). And I have always felt like a certain setting plays equally fast on all courses I've used them on. There were a few times where I first thought the round was supposed to be on either F/Mc or M/Fc, but it actually was set to F/Fc, and those times it quickly became quite obvious.

I dont think overall score is a particularly good way of judging the difficulty of certain aspects of the game either, at least not green speed difficulty. I once played Portmarnock and scored -7 (was only one away from my record across any course back then) and then thought, "Wow I thought I only played okay, this course sure is a bit of a pushover", and then two months later I played it again on similar settings, scored +8 and thought "What the heck, I thought I had determined this is a really easy course, and I didnt even feel like I played all that bad...". I think that one must have been a rather extreme example, but sometimes the putts just roll in, sometimes they dont. Once or twice I've gotten 22 putts on F/Fc (even without missing more than an average amount of greens), Once or twice I've gotten 35 putts on Mc/Mc without having a single 3-putt.

Actually, I thought of one tiny possibility of an explanation though... I've encountered one or maybe two courses which were poorly programmed in APCD and had small specs of fringe or fairway ON the green where it clearly should not have been, invisible to the eye unless moving the aim marker onto that specific spot and seeing that it said fringe or fairway instead of green. My putt slowed down a lot when it hit that spot, otherwise I would not have noticed it. I might be mistaken but I think Southerness was one of those courses. Cant say whether it was what you encountered, but a tiny possibility.


I realize that my findings about fairway speeds only relying on the firmness setting was something that many people probably already knew about, I was merely able to confirm it. I had heard it long ago, but more recently there was something that made me think that was not the case and that the green speed setting actually had an effect as well. I dont remember what it was, but now Im sure that the green speed setting does not effect fairways/fringes (at least not with the 6 ordinary speed settings S , Sc , M , Mc , F , Fc).


About a few bad pins per round being enough to ruin what would otherwise be fun on faster green speeds - yes it is indeed a sad thing That is why I made the custom pin sharing thread ( https://linkscorner.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1184 )

About the official pin difficulties, yes, it sure varies a lot and there are often no apparent rhyme or reason to it. Some designers have systems they tend to stick to though, and while those systems vary a lot between designers too, one can sometimes at least learn individual designers' patterns to one's benefit.

About club distances, do you have the Pro Distance Mod? I know it doesnt reach the distances of today's pros, but it helps some. At least I know people who use it and like it. Havent tried it personally, because Im quite happy and content with only hitting 285 yards. If you ask me, the modern pros (and many other long hitters) are missing out on the fun of playing golf courses the way they were mainly designed to be played.

My current thinking is that I dont want to make my custom fairway setting bounce and roll TOO much... Linksters are probably going to rage and immediately throw my custom settings in the bin if their well-hit drives run out of fairway - even if it is more realistic that way and it was their own fault for not strategizing properly... Therefore... Im thinking it might be best to keep them at least a little slower than I otherwise would have.

I was definitely planning on making fairways on linksland courses faster or at least firmer than parkland courses however. Royal St George's was perhaps the main course that made me form/advance my plans of one day making custom properties, because those bounces and rolls on fairways and fringes are such a big part of the real course's design, especially right around the greens, and they just dont become noticeable in Links. How many times have you seen in pro golf how golf balls will not only run off the green, but continue far down into collection area hollows in the fairway or even into water hazards or bunkers? To me it feels like all the time, its a big part of green design on many types of courses, not just linksland courses. How many times have you seen that happen in Links? Almost never (unless the ball travel speed is extremely fast when reaching the green), the ball usually stops quite fast when it reaches the fringe, even on fairly steep slopes. The only exception I can think of, in fact, is Augusta 9th, where my ball has accelarated off the green and far down the fairway several times. Not sure if it has custom properties, but the slope is pretty extreme there so it might not be (custom fairway properties can be achieved without the player selecting "Course Setting", if (and only if) the designer pulls off a certain trick, making the fairway officially classify as something other than fairway (can be done in only specific spots), but then some weirdness can happen when the ball either bounces on that spot (it doesnt sound like a fairway bounce) or when the ball stops in those spots and the player animation/voice acts like you hit a much worse shot than you did.

I briefly considered using that trick on Nine Bridges 7th hole in order to put the water hazard more in play (like I suspected it might be in real life), but I ended up going "whatever, players hate custom properties, and they wont have any opt-out option if I use that trick".

That trick doesnt work for greens though (because pins need to be planted on official green surface).

You really should not encourage me any more MrT, I keep trying to not make my posts too long and.... well...

@Adelade... No problems. I will write down the courses where I notice sensible differences in speed on greens despite using same settings. As I hardly ever replay the same courses more than once every 1-2 months, I forgot what they were. I have an idea, of course, but do not want to mention names I am not 100% positive. Princeville has many issues: it is a Microsoft 2003 course, definitely below today's standards. I would not worry too much about that. But surely there M/Fc feels slowish.. Played twice because I wanted to experiment a few things.

Pro-Distance version. I do have it installed alongside the normal one. The 378 meters drive was achieved using Pro Distance (which works only with Classic Swing and not RTS, but I sat down to see how far I could send the ball on some holes that I know can allow big shots (as they are downhill quite a bit). In the regular Links game and RTS my longest drive is 339 meters.

You take your time... Right now, I found my sweet spot for the game: my best games in M/Fc scoring at -5 or -6 which is all I wanted. Do not want to go lower than that on average or the games will feel totally fake. I have started to play with F/Fc or Mc/Fc, but there are greens on most courses that become nearly unplayable at those settings. Like you said: there is too big a gap in speed from M/Fc to Mc or F/Fc.

Miscellanea. I am very happy that with the LIDAR technology that some of you designers are employing because greens (in the courses that were made using it) seem and feel more realistic. On those I can play F/Fc or Mc/Fc as well I played half of the new Carnoustie with Difficult pin settings and F/Fc earlier today and greens are fast, but not absurdly fast, I was at -1 after 9 holes, then a client called and needed to go. Maybe the back 9s are more difficult, dunno..

Anyway, I will look forward to what you manage to do. I am sure you will do a good job eventually. Cheers.