Golfing Tips For TGC Difficulty From a Non-expert
Sept 23, 2020 8:17:36 GMT -5
TreeWood, xboxjonnyuk, and 3 more like this
Post by iorwerth on Sept 23, 2020 8:17:36 GMT -5
This is mainly aimed at those who are new to the game, or just found the TGC tour site but are struggling with the difficulty levels and scoring badly. I posted a fair bit of this on another thread but thought I would post it in its own thread so it would be easier for others to see and find.
When I started playing the game my scores were bad – generally 20 or more over par per round. I had played some Golf Club 2019, but not a large amount, and this didn’t seem to be helping much. Through experimentation and watching videos of how others played the new version, I managed to bring that down to around an average of 13 over par after about a week, and then a week later to around 5 over, and now I have managed to hit a few rounds under par. So, I am not really a good player, but I have got over that initial hurdle where the game seems impossible, and thought I would pass on a few of the things I did (and still do) that helped me achieve this, so that those who are struggling with the TGC difficulty settings might find something that is useful. I don’t go into deep detail and most of this is quite general in nature.
Swing Plane
I think the first thing is to get control of is your swing plane. On the master difficulty level not hitting straightish really has a negative impact. So, getting better at this is a good first step. I experimented with a few different controller grip types until I found one that seemed to work best (the cradle grip for me – google it if interested) and then I just went out on the driving range and swung away until I started to improve the swing plane. I didn’t bother hitting the actual balls, just used the practice swing, as this is faster to do multiple swings with i.e. you don’t have to wait for the ball to land and roll.
Swing Tempo
Hitting the ball with perfect swing tempo with any regularity is way beyond me. One day maybe, but at the moment trying to do it just leads to my shots going all over the place. So, what I do is always aim for a fast tempo and adjust the aim of my shot to the right to account for it. The amount to aim to the right takes a bit of practice, but you can learn about it on the driving range. However, the driving range often has wind, and I haven’t figured a way to get rid of it, so I would advise you to go and make a testing course with the course designer – just a massive fairway. It is not as difficult as it seems – I watched a couple of ‘how to’ vids, and then created one in around 5 to 10 mins. That way you can practice without having wind impact to learn how far to aim right (and to experiment with various club distances and so on).
Another thing I did, as I wanted to hit fast tempo, was to calibrate my swing using the slowest tempo shots I could. I have no idea if this actually made a difference, but I figured it might make slows less common and fasts easier to hit, so that is what I did.
My swing tempo is not good enough to always get the same fast tempo, as it can vary widely, so how far to aim out is always a bit of guesswork, but the more you do it, the better you become at it.
The other thing I did was to go and buy the most forgiving clubs I could. Now that I am slightly better at the fast tempo I have moved off forgiveness and gone for distance, but starting with forgiveness seems like a good idea until the fast swing tempo becomes more natural.
Lastly on swing tempo – I always seem to hit with overpowered swings – anywhere between 101% to sometime even 105%. This, coupled with the fact that my normal tempo is fast, means my shots always go further than the carry distance the game says. My rule of thumb is to add about 10 yds for woods and Irons, and around 4 yds for wedges. I did a bit of very unscientific testing to come up with these numbers, so take them with a pinch of salt, but I can’t be bothered to look things up on tables, so a rough rule of thumb is what I go with.
Partial Shots
I always avoid partial shots if I can. I sometimes use them with chips or occasionally with splash shots, but outside of that I don’t use them at all. Often the game will suggest a club and will set the aim marker with a partial shot, so I always push the aim to the maximum distance for the club and then look to see what club and shot type I want to actually use. I find the game is always wanting me to do partial pitch shots near the green, and I learned the hard way that these are something to be avoided like the plague, at least for my level of ability.
If I find myself with a distance between clubs then I will look to shot shape and hit nearer the bottom of the ball for the longer club most of the time. Draw also reduces distance, but I haven’t got around to practicing it that much to have an idea about how much extra it knocks off – that is my next bit of practicing I am aiming to do. I figure with shot shape at the bottom it will knock off around 10 yds or so, so that is what I use as a rough estimate. It is undoubtably not very accurate, but it sort of works, and at the moment that is good enough for me.
Wind
Tailwind – add around 75% of windspeed (MPH) to carry distance of club
Cross Tailwind – add around 50%
Headwind – subtract around 150% of wind
Cross Headwind – subtract around 100% of the wind speed.
Again, these are not very accurate, but at least they are easy to remember and don’t rely on looking things up on a table.
As to aiming right or left for wind, I just judge that by gut feeling. As my shots aim at fast tempo, and the level of exact fast varies a fair bit, getting too hung-up on exact adjustments seems a bit of fool’s errand for me at the moment, so I just hazard my best guess and push the aim marker accordingly. However, this is another area I am going to experiment with.
Putting
Getting better at this was the key thing for me to start coming down in my scores – I three and four putted so much that getting a score even near par was basically impossible. While I am not that good now, I tend to average under two putts a hole, and those double or triple bogeys are now more likely to be created by my failing to get to the green in regulation than through dreadful putting.
The first thing is that you need to putt straight. If you set everything up perfectly, get the right speed, but your putt is not straight, your putt will miss. So, getting better at this is a key first step. I use the same grip as I use on for normal shots, I just pull the putter back more slowly – a fast pull-back motion tends to make me putt off-line and generally balls it up, so I go slowish. There is a sort of bug I find that can occur when you push forward a bit tentatively and the ball goes less distance then it should. To counter this I always try to remember to push firmly forward, but it still happens occasionally.
Aim Marker: When you first go to putt the game sets your aim marker at a distance to allow for the slope as it thinks best. Don’t use this!! Always bring your aim marker to the hole and then read the height off that. I find that the height shown above the flag is often wrong, and the distance the game gives you is most often wrong as well, compared to where I end up when I set it myself. This is a key tip for me, and I really recommend getting into the habit of doing this for every putt!
The next key step is getting the putt distance correct. My philosophy is to be satisfied with a two putt, so if the putt is not a short one my main aim is to leave the ball close if I miss – safe and steady is what I look for rather than boom or bust when it comes to putting. A quick caveat on some of the stuff that follows – I use the rumble on the controller to judge the power for the putt on the distance I set up, and I have a tendency to react slightly late to the rumble, so I tend to putt with slightly more power than where I have the distance set to, so bear that in mind for the general rules on putting distance I talk about below. When going to make a putt I do around 3 to 4 practice swings, where I pull back to the rumble, just so I can get an idea of where the rumble is for when I go for it for real.
Downhill Putts: I subtract the drop in height from the putt length, and then take some more off, depending on the length of the putt and whether the slope continues down after the hole. The longer the putt goes down the slope, the more I take off – so for really long putts I am taking loads more off. I don’t use a hard and fast rule on this, but just adjust as feels best. My aim is not to shoot past the hole on all putts but especially long ones, as all I want is to get it close on my first putt, so I tend to err on the side of caution and increase the downhill distance adjustment i.e. I tend to pull aim back to a distance where it seems about right, then think about it for a second or two and pull it back a bit more. Really it is just a matter of practice, but under-hitting downhill is way better than over-hitting I think.
Uphill Putts: I tend to add the height onto the distance and then add a foot or two more. I think I may want to up this a bit, and maybe add x1.5 the height difference, but at the moment two putting is ok for me and I prefer to be a bit short with an uphill putt than too long and have to putt downhill. Anyway, I a may start increasing my power on these uphill putts.
Anyway, I hope that this proves useful to someone. If others have a tip or two to share, or to correct my various rules of thumb that are probably way off, then that would be great.
When I started playing the game my scores were bad – generally 20 or more over par per round. I had played some Golf Club 2019, but not a large amount, and this didn’t seem to be helping much. Through experimentation and watching videos of how others played the new version, I managed to bring that down to around an average of 13 over par after about a week, and then a week later to around 5 over, and now I have managed to hit a few rounds under par. So, I am not really a good player, but I have got over that initial hurdle where the game seems impossible, and thought I would pass on a few of the things I did (and still do) that helped me achieve this, so that those who are struggling with the TGC difficulty settings might find something that is useful. I don’t go into deep detail and most of this is quite general in nature.
Swing Plane
I think the first thing is to get control of is your swing plane. On the master difficulty level not hitting straightish really has a negative impact. So, getting better at this is a good first step. I experimented with a few different controller grip types until I found one that seemed to work best (the cradle grip for me – google it if interested) and then I just went out on the driving range and swung away until I started to improve the swing plane. I didn’t bother hitting the actual balls, just used the practice swing, as this is faster to do multiple swings with i.e. you don’t have to wait for the ball to land and roll.
Swing Tempo
Hitting the ball with perfect swing tempo with any regularity is way beyond me. One day maybe, but at the moment trying to do it just leads to my shots going all over the place. So, what I do is always aim for a fast tempo and adjust the aim of my shot to the right to account for it. The amount to aim to the right takes a bit of practice, but you can learn about it on the driving range. However, the driving range often has wind, and I haven’t figured a way to get rid of it, so I would advise you to go and make a testing course with the course designer – just a massive fairway. It is not as difficult as it seems – I watched a couple of ‘how to’ vids, and then created one in around 5 to 10 mins. That way you can practice without having wind impact to learn how far to aim right (and to experiment with various club distances and so on).
Another thing I did, as I wanted to hit fast tempo, was to calibrate my swing using the slowest tempo shots I could. I have no idea if this actually made a difference, but I figured it might make slows less common and fasts easier to hit, so that is what I did.
My swing tempo is not good enough to always get the same fast tempo, as it can vary widely, so how far to aim out is always a bit of guesswork, but the more you do it, the better you become at it.
The other thing I did was to go and buy the most forgiving clubs I could. Now that I am slightly better at the fast tempo I have moved off forgiveness and gone for distance, but starting with forgiveness seems like a good idea until the fast swing tempo becomes more natural.
Lastly on swing tempo – I always seem to hit with overpowered swings – anywhere between 101% to sometime even 105%. This, coupled with the fact that my normal tempo is fast, means my shots always go further than the carry distance the game says. My rule of thumb is to add about 10 yds for woods and Irons, and around 4 yds for wedges. I did a bit of very unscientific testing to come up with these numbers, so take them with a pinch of salt, but I can’t be bothered to look things up on tables, so a rough rule of thumb is what I go with.
Partial Shots
I always avoid partial shots if I can. I sometimes use them with chips or occasionally with splash shots, but outside of that I don’t use them at all. Often the game will suggest a club and will set the aim marker with a partial shot, so I always push the aim to the maximum distance for the club and then look to see what club and shot type I want to actually use. I find the game is always wanting me to do partial pitch shots near the green, and I learned the hard way that these are something to be avoided like the plague, at least for my level of ability.
If I find myself with a distance between clubs then I will look to shot shape and hit nearer the bottom of the ball for the longer club most of the time. Draw also reduces distance, but I haven’t got around to practicing it that much to have an idea about how much extra it knocks off – that is my next bit of practicing I am aiming to do. I figure with shot shape at the bottom it will knock off around 10 yds or so, so that is what I use as a rough estimate. It is undoubtably not very accurate, but it sort of works, and at the moment that is good enough for me.
Wind
At the moment I am just roughly judging it and adjusting the aim marker. This is another area I am going to try and fine-tune in a while, and there are some good vids out there to do it with, but for the wind's impact on a club’s carry distance I tend to use the following:
Cross Tailwind – add around 50%
Headwind – subtract around 150% of wind
Cross Headwind – subtract around 100% of the wind speed.
Again, these are not very accurate, but at least they are easy to remember and don’t rely on looking things up on a table.
As to aiming right or left for wind, I just judge that by gut feeling. As my shots aim at fast tempo, and the level of exact fast varies a fair bit, getting too hung-up on exact adjustments seems a bit of fool’s errand for me at the moment, so I just hazard my best guess and push the aim marker accordingly. However, this is another area I am going to experiment with.
Putting
Getting better at this was the key thing for me to start coming down in my scores – I three and four putted so much that getting a score even near par was basically impossible. While I am not that good now, I tend to average under two putts a hole, and those double or triple bogeys are now more likely to be created by my failing to get to the green in regulation than through dreadful putting.
The first thing is that you need to putt straight. If you set everything up perfectly, get the right speed, but your putt is not straight, your putt will miss. So, getting better at this is a key first step. I use the same grip as I use on for normal shots, I just pull the putter back more slowly – a fast pull-back motion tends to make me putt off-line and generally balls it up, so I go slowish. There is a sort of bug I find that can occur when you push forward a bit tentatively and the ball goes less distance then it should. To counter this I always try to remember to push firmly forward, but it still happens occasionally.
Aim Marker: When you first go to putt the game sets your aim marker at a distance to allow for the slope as it thinks best. Don’t use this!! Always bring your aim marker to the hole and then read the height off that. I find that the height shown above the flag is often wrong, and the distance the game gives you is most often wrong as well, compared to where I end up when I set it myself. This is a key tip for me, and I really recommend getting into the habit of doing this for every putt!
The next key step is getting the putt distance correct. My philosophy is to be satisfied with a two putt, so if the putt is not a short one my main aim is to leave the ball close if I miss – safe and steady is what I look for rather than boom or bust when it comes to putting. A quick caveat on some of the stuff that follows – I use the rumble on the controller to judge the power for the putt on the distance I set up, and I have a tendency to react slightly late to the rumble, so I tend to putt with slightly more power than where I have the distance set to, so bear that in mind for the general rules on putting distance I talk about below. When going to make a putt I do around 3 to 4 practice swings, where I pull back to the rumble, just so I can get an idea of where the rumble is for when I go for it for real.
Downhill Putts: I subtract the drop in height from the putt length, and then take some more off, depending on the length of the putt and whether the slope continues down after the hole. The longer the putt goes down the slope, the more I take off – so for really long putts I am taking loads more off. I don’t use a hard and fast rule on this, but just adjust as feels best. My aim is not to shoot past the hole on all putts but especially long ones, as all I want is to get it close on my first putt, so I tend to err on the side of caution and increase the downhill distance adjustment i.e. I tend to pull aim back to a distance where it seems about right, then think about it for a second or two and pull it back a bit more. Really it is just a matter of practice, but under-hitting downhill is way better than over-hitting I think.
Uphill Putts: I tend to add the height onto the distance and then add a foot or two more. I think I may want to up this a bit, and maybe add x1.5 the height difference, but at the moment two putting is ok for me and I prefer to be a bit short with an uphill putt than too long and have to putt downhill. Anyway, I a may start increasing my power on these uphill putts.
Adjusting Aim Left or Right for slope: At the moment I just do this by eye. There are counting systems out there that use clicks/flicks depending on counting the grid lines dot speed or their colours, and I am beginning to experiment with them, but generally I just do it by eye at the moment.
So, there are some basic things that I did that helped me improve my scores. Obviously, practice is key – I am at around level 30 in the game with my golfer, so I have played a fair few rounds, but not nearly as many as some have. I know this advice is pretty general in nature, but unless you go down the rabbit hole of having data sheets and other pieces of paper all around you when you play, then I figure a few general tips are easier to take on board and might be more useful for someone struggling.
Anyway, I hope that this proves useful to someone. If others have a tip or two to share, or to correct my various rules of thumb that are probably way off, then that would be great.
