Some additional tips to help you improve your game...

[Deano]

This post is a followup on the wonderful tips in snvboy's post in this forum.

Nova Golf provides you the opportunity to improve your equipment and your skill levels as you gain experience points (and "purses") playing tournaments and practice rounds.

Here are some thoughts ...

Equipment in the pro shop...

1. Upgrade your Driver and Putter first, and get better golf balls whenever you have enough credits.
Why?
Bad drives can really put you in a bad situation right at the start of holes that are a good test even for someone who can drive well. And the better you can putt, the better ou can score.
The generic balls, as you can see from the stats, are inconsistent, at best.
As snvboy notes, Nova Golf is very faithful to the saying: "Drive for dough, putt for show."
You don't need long drives, but accurate ones sure do go a long way to helping you score. Nova Golf rewards you for your accuracy.

2. Then I'd upgrade your wedges next, then irons and finally the secondary woods.

As you play additional rounds, hopefully, your skill level improves and you get additional experience and pro shop credits. And you need better equipment. It's amazing how this helps improve your game more in Nova Golf.

Skill improvement points...

As you continue to play, you gain points you can use to upgrade your Power, Accuracy, Putting, Recovery and Spin skills.

My recommendation is upgrading this way:

1. Accuracy and Putting first.
2. Power
3. Recovery
4. Spin

Yes, power does helps on the courses, particularly when the wind is in your face, but there's no substitute for accuracy, especially as you figure out how to manage your game on the courses, i.e., which areas to shoot at to safely navigate to the green.

I have mixed feelings about spin, because sometimes I like to play a shot I hope releases and runs up to the hole. Also, sometimes the spin is so dramatic, balls hit and bounce backwards. I also like to try hitting high shots that land softly on the green, but these shots often have so much spin it negates the accuracy of the original shot.

Anyway, hope this helps and I look forward to seeing you all when the online tournaments are a reality.

Cheers...

Deano

[Jake]

Great tips, I'll link the guide to here as well as to the other thread.

As I was testing the game I basically followed those same equipment/stat upgrades. After accuracy (by far the most important) and putting were at acceptable levels I started putting more points into power. The green tees become very difficult when every approach is with a long iron, regardless of how accurate that iron is. Spin can usually wait until the difficult level is set to medium or hard, on easy soft greens too much spin can actually be a problem (ever see a pro on TV shove a shot to a few feet to have it roll backwards off the green?). Recovery is nice to have sometimes when it takes twice as much experience to level up the other stats as recovery, if accuracy is high enough recovery becomes less valuable.

I need to get back to work and get these online tournaments going, so much planned for Nova Golf and so little time to do it all!

[voicebox]

Hi Jake,

I have been rather busy of late and whilst I upgraded to Version 1.01 I have not been able to play for a couple of weeks!
I have to say that having mouse control now has greatly improved Nova Golf - and my game in general, although I still find putting a bit of a lottery - more than a little tricky!
The greens, especially the Nova Links greens, I find are a little 'slippery' - one needs a little bit of luck!
On the other hand, I remember what the great Gary Player said when someone told him that he (Player) seemed to be lucky with his bunker play, he said: 'Yeah, the more I practice, the luckier I get!'
So, practice, practice and more practice, I suppose!
A great improvement Jake, thank you. Now I am getting the hang of it, I am beginning to enjoy Nova Golf more and more.

John.