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Post by Q on Jun 20, 2022 21:47:38 GMT -5
This week we start a string of a couple of courses that were partially redesigned with Platinum in mind. Rio Villegas by Heisenberg was a 2021 National Treasure Contest course for the country of Argentina, but this version, the "platino" version, was just a recent renovation. Heisenberg was kind enough to change some small elements of the course to make it more flexible for platinum scheduling. This doesn't necessarily mean all the changes made it harder, but more or less to add more room for variety in scheduling such as adding tees for a specific "very high wind" direction so it plays well in it, and changing a par 5 into a 4 as having a "must eagle" hole is a little silly imo (tbf plat makes this game silly enough already). Otherwise, This course has plenty of elevation changes that it should prove challenging and it should be a fair test this week, back to the normal "above -20" cutline area we've all grown to accept. Next weeks course is challenging in a different way entirely!
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Post by fransslabak on Jun 21, 2022 3:05:49 GMT -5
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Post by up mup kupen nup on Jun 21, 2022 3:54:50 GMT -5
Hello. Week 2 of playing pixel golf with an Excel sheet. It looks like knowing where my clubs will land in high and very high winds has a significant impact on my game (this is very surprising ). Sitting at -23 through two rounds, I will comfortably make the cut and erase at least one of my two remaining demo marks. Now which conclusions to draw? I don't know yet. I'm actually quite torn. On one hand, it feels surprisingly good to be playing four rounds in Plat for two weeks in a row and to be competing with the best. On the other hand, trying to guess where the club will go is a fun part of the game. Having notes of rough distances available, it all becomes a more predictable, and I already miss the feeling I had each time one of my more or less educated guesses was on point. I always played with the approach of just jumping right into my rounds. One or two rounds of warm-up in some society and that's it. No practice rounds, no click techniques whatsoever, only rough estimates for elevation and maybe wind. Adopting the more scientific approach of noting down club distances thus feels like I'm betraying my own ideals in some sense. I would be interested in hearing other players' opinions on the above thoughts, in particular on charting clubs. What's your take? Good luck all!
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Post by fransslabak on Jun 21, 2022 10:03:46 GMT -5
Hello. Week 2 of playing pixel golf with an Excel sheet. It looks like knowing where my clubs will land in high and very high winds has a significant impact on my game (this is very surprising ). Sitting at -23 through two rounds, I will comfortably make the cut and erase at least one of my two remaining demo marks. Now which conclusions to draw? I don't know yet. I'm actually quite torn. On one hand, it feels surprisingly good to be playing four rounds in Plat for two weeks in a row and to be competing with the best. On the other hand, trying to guess where the club will go is a fun part of the game. Having notes of rough distances available, it all becomes a more predictable, and I already miss the feeling I had each time one of my more or less educated guesses was on point. I always played with the approach of just jumping right into my rounds. One or two rounds of warm-up in some society and that's it. No practice rounds, no click techniques whatsoever, only rough estimates for elevation and maybe wind. Adopting the more scientific approach of noting down club distances thus feels like I'm betraying my own ideals in some sense. I would be interested in hearing other players' opinions on the above thoughts, in particular on charting clubs. What's your take? Good luck all! My honest opinion is that I cannot wait for 2K23 to drop and hope that that version will make a non-counting, non-excel approach the way to go. Back in the day, I used excel-based shot setups in Links and got extremely bored within days. Never going back to that approach and what I love about HB's game is that you can actually score pretty decent without excels - just hope that type of play will become more competitive again in 2K23 and a subsequent move back to a more difficult swing level here at TGCTOURS.
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Post by morrisseymb on Jun 21, 2022 10:48:29 GMT -5
Hello. Week 2 of playing pixel golf with an Excel sheet. It looks like knowing where my clubs will land in high and very high winds has a significant impact on my game (this is very surprising ). Sitting at -23 through two rounds, I will comfortably make the cut and erase at least one of my two remaining demo marks. Now which conclusions to draw? I don't know yet. I'm actually quite torn. On one hand, it feels surprisingly good to be playing four rounds in Plat for two weeks in a row and to be competing with the best. On the other hand, trying to guess where the club will go is a fun part of the game. Having notes of rough distances available, it all becomes a more predictable, and I already miss the feeling I had each time one of my more or less educated guesses was on point. I always played with the approach of just jumping right into my rounds. One or two rounds of warm-up in some society and that's it. No practice rounds, no click techniques whatsoever, only rough estimates for elevation and maybe wind. Adopting the more scientific approach of noting down club distances thus feels like I'm betraying my own ideals in some sense. I would be interested in hearing other players' opinions on the above thoughts, in particular on charting clubs. What's your take? Good luck all! My honest opinion is that I cannot wait for 2K23 to drop and hope that that version will make a non-counting, non-excel approach the way to go. Back in the day, I used excel-based shot setups in Links and got extremely bored within days. Never going back to that approach and what I love about HB's game is that you can actually score pretty decent without excels - just hope that type of play will become more competitive again in 2K23 and a subsequent move back to a more difficult swing level here at TGCTOURS. I think there's a lot of wisdom to this, with the current settings that make it relatively easy to execute the shot you want it puts a premium on planning / calculating the right shot. What kind of effort to put into this and how that impacts your enjoyment I think is totally up to each player. For me, coming up here (briefly) has exposed that I'm not great at this aspect of the game (adjusting for tougher conditions including wind). Some will probably improve with experience, and I've tried to pick up some quick tricks, but for me going beyond that wasn't worth the time investment. Not coincidentally I'll be picking up the sufficient red marks to eject after this tourney, which is ok for me, I've enjoyed more of the CC-based competitions and team aspects more than this for a bit, and very ok with being one of the many in the grey zone between competing well on Elite + not really competitive on Plat
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Post by Tombanator on Jun 21, 2022 15:20:28 GMT -5
Hello. Week 2 of playing pixel golf with an Excel sheet. It looks like knowing where my clubs will land in high and very high winds has a significant impact on my game (this is very surprising ). Sitting at -23 through two rounds, I will comfortably make the cut and erase at least one of my two remaining demo marks. Now which conclusions to draw? I don't know yet. I'm actually quite torn. On one hand, it feels surprisingly good to be playing four rounds in Plat for two weeks in a row and to be competing with the best. On the other hand, trying to guess where the club will go is a fun part of the game. Having notes of rough distances available, it all becomes a more predictable, and I already miss the feeling I had each time one of my more or less educated guesses was on point. I always played with the approach of just jumping right into my rounds. One or two rounds of warm-up in some society and that's it. No practice rounds, no click techniques whatsoever, only rough estimates for elevation and maybe wind. Adopting the more scientific approach of noting down club distances thus feels like I'm betraying my own ideals in some sense. I would be interested in hearing other players' opinions on the above thoughts, in particular on charting clubs. What's your take? Good luck all! I feel like I'm on the same train of ideals. Just some society warm up to tune up the tempo, get a few calculations in to warm up my math head, the likes. Also, apologies for intruding this tour's page as I am, in fact, not a Platinum player. To me, the fun is trying to calculate the shots in my own head with just educated guesses and estimates made from playing the game a lot to see where it's supposedly landing. I tried the "scientific method" for a few days way back when, but gave up when I realized that it's not for me, too much work over... what, exactly? Hitting a virtual ball as close to the pin as you can get it? Pfft. Now sure, I have never been too concerned about being competitive and less so being in Elite for a couple months now against my initial expectations, but I guess if you gotta get everything down to Excel sheets and millimeter precision, and you have the chances and skill to execute with said precision, more power to them. I suppose it comes down to how you like playing the game yourself, and I guess some could enjoy it more knowing exactly what should happen with each shot. But at least to me, I'd much rather miss a few more shots thanks to being wrong myself and go with the flow rather than try and science the ball into the hole every time, because if that actually happened then there's nothing left to do, right? If my approach is inferior to Excel sheets and utter nerdism, then so be it, I don't really care. Those are my two cents on the matter. Anyway, hope you have (or had) fun up here this week, I'll probably never join you folks here. Only if I want to play for fun, or some place (I think it's Hell, Michigan but not sure) freezes over and allows struggling Elitists to cross over all of a sudden.
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Post by Q on Jun 21, 2022 16:24:07 GMT -5
My honest opinion is that I cannot wait for 2K23 to drop and hope that that version will make a non-counting, non-excel approach the way to go. Back in the day, I used excel-based shot setups in Links and got extremely bored within days. Never going back to that approach and what I love about HB's game is that you can actually score pretty decent without excels - just hope that type of play will become more competitive again in 2K23 and a subsequent move back to a more difficult swing level here at TGCTOURS. I'm in a similar camp though I play many twitch based reflex games and my tempo was the best part of my game. I know there are players that really enjoy the excel/math calculations style of play as well so Im hoping that the next game will have harder tempo which would allow us to turn back on more indicators, which should appease both crowds since the math would also be more doable! also really crossing my fingers Xbox isnt as shafted next game
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Post by trentmcneely on Jun 21, 2022 18:12:57 GMT -5
I think there is a little bit of a misconception about the spreadsheet players that they're like combing through notes with every shot or something. I probably look at my wind chart once or twice a round, usually when I'm in between a cross and straight wind just to see like what the range is between them to make a guess. Same with the club shaping charts. You put in that initial effort and then play with them maybe a week or two and you pretty much have the gist of it. I really don't see how that is that much different than playing and making mental notes and guessing for shots. Like just writing it down makes me that much more sweaty than you, lol.
But we're all just out here wasting time hitting virtual golf balls like someone said. But if I'm going to waste my time, I'm at least going to try and waste it to better results than you. Especially in Plat. Plat is a competitive outlet for me and not really for fun. Is anyone really playing Plat for fun? If so I hope you're in therapy.
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woolmerc
Weekend Golfer
Posts: 117
TGCT Name: Chris Woolmer
Tour: Kinetic
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Post by woolmerc on Jun 22, 2022 1:47:05 GMT -5
Some great thoughts there Trent. Basically I think it comes down to every player and how they like to play. Some will love the maths, others will like testing their natural instinct.
I'm well below Platinum, currently in CC-D, so no expert at all. I've been playing for just 8 months. I don't have a spreadsheet but instead have an old-school pad sitting next to me that has 4 columns titled: - half loft - full loft - half deloft - full deloft
In those columns I have numbers for each club indicating the -/+ yardage amount. There are many other variables in the game I find, so this will just help me get somewhat close.
I used to have a chart for wind but it didn't seem to help me a lot. So nowadays I am just using instinct for the wind, and I find that is better for me :-)
So in summary, I do a little bit of maths but don't get bogged down in it too much.
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Post by up mup kupen nup on Jun 22, 2022 4:58:43 GMT -5
Hello. Thank you all for your contributions! A lot of very interesting views have been shared, so I'll just try to react briefly. fransslabak I understand where you are coming from as we both have been here in the Master swing days as well. I'm not sure, however, if it is feasible to achieve that a raw non-scientific will ever be the "way to go", as knowing where the ball will land if the shot is properly executed will always have an advantage, even if the swing is more difficult to execute. I also hope for a more difficult swing at TGCTours, but I admit it's more important to ensure that all consoles/input devices will have the same chances as that's what cross-platform competition is all about. Moreover, we have to keep in mind that TGCT might lose players (net) if they up the difficulty. morrisseymb Haha we're exactly on the same page! I've been playing this game since 2017 with exactly your approach. However, it recently annoyed me more and more that I absolutely don't know what I do in tough conditions. In the long run, maybe just remembering one rough number for high/very high winds (like 10 yards for each 30 feet elevation) and then guess from there will be the best way for me. And about preferring CC team competitions... well, you know who you are talking to. Tombanator Yup, I never really cared either. Went from CC-B to Elite back to CC-B and back to Elite before landing in Plat and never really cared. But as said above, not knowing what to do with the wind got increasingly annoying. And now that I spent some time in the lab, I have to admit that being able to make cuts on Plat surprisingly adds to the excitement. And now, all of a sudden, I caught myself glancing at the WGR! So, in a certain sense, my point of view may be evolving, switching to a more competitive approach. And that's why I wanted to hear opinions. Q You really sum it up well here. Having a good balance between swing execution and shot setup is the key. I still think that the current swing difficulty separates players according to skill, but it feels like shot setup is overemphasized at the moment. trentmcneely With 4 Plat rounds in, I can indeed confirm that I still have to think a lot about adjustments I have to make. With the notes I have, however, I know that I can rely on a good base and then go from there. I also noticed that I don't look at the table as much as I thought initially, and I'm confident that the amount of times will decrease as I will develop a better intuition over time. My goal is to eventually get rid of the Excel file and return to educated guesses, but with a higher level of education because I will have learnt something along the way. woolmerc Yes, that's where I'm at at the moment as well, except that I obviously have added wind impacts because that's what interested me the most. I only note full loft, not halves, though, as I try to interpolate everything in between. Cheers all and thanks again!
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Post by up mup kupen nup on Jun 25, 2022 17:31:51 GMT -5
Hello. Week 2 of playing pixel golf with an Excel sheet. It looks like knowing where my clubs will land in high and very high winds has a significant impact on my game (this is very surprising ). Sitting at -23 through two rounds, I will comfortably make the cut and erase at least one of my two remaining demo marks. Finished -13 -10 for a -46 and probably my best placement in Plat with a full field.
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