Distances and Lofts

Aim: To remind you all ( as if you didn't know ) that you can adjust the behaviour of your club for those between-club distances, but most of all to teach you how to work out an entire loft table by remembering just FOUR numbers...oh yes, read on....

First of all, just to show any of you that didn't know ( and I went a long time before someone showed me this !) here is the shot setup screen which comes up in the screen when you see the clubs listed for your shot, pick your club then click the "setup" button to bring this baby up.Now I'm only going to talk about loft here, but you should know that Dan Perry also discusses how you can alter the other buttons to hit straight shots in a wind, so do check that out. You can find a link to his excellent site in the links section of this guide.The important things to notice before we look at the loft are...first of all make sure the box at the bottom right of the screen is ticked, this will make sure that any changes you make are for the current shot only, be aware that if you have problems with your club distances you should check this (happened to me with my 6iron)...go to the setup screen and click the default button bottom left, this will return your club to the "factory setting", so if you are doing this to correct a mistake, you dont want the "this shot only" box ticked...then you can be sure for all future shots your club will start out at the default of loft setting of 4 clicks from the top ( except driver, 2 clicks from the top ). Right, the button you are moving is the one in the vertical slider to the left of the funny feet, you want the one with the ball in it ( shown on diagram ). Moving this up from its default position is increasing the loft on the shot which will cause the ball to go higher and shorter than normal, and stop quicker on landing, this is useful for landing on a downhill green or hard/fast surfaces. You'll know that the "flop" shot which you can select for each club is just the same as manually clicking the loft button up 4 clicks to the top.You'll see this sort of adjustment referred to as "plus" loft, ie +3 is 3 clicks up from default, whereas moving the ball down from default ("delofting") is "minus" loft...these shots go lower and roll further and longer than normal, so use these to get that extra few yards from a club and to sometimes reduce backspin effects on short clubs. You should refer to the section on uphill and downhill lies, but you should note that you can sometimes ( if not too severe ) think of lies in terms of loft settings, so for example if I have a 130 yard shot but I decide the lie is uphill and equivalent to +2 (uphill lie) I can of course move up a club to compensate, or I can click the loft on the 9 iron DOWN two to offset the lie and then play the shot as if it was a flat 130 yards, however this sort of balancing lies with loft settings will be shown to be more useful in the chipping section.So, now you know how to adjust your clubs and what's going on, let's see the actual effect on the clubs.By the way, in LS99 it's actually more common now to use the default clubs rather than mess with the loft, you'll see that is the result of a decrease in the effectiveness of loft as you go to the longer clubs. Like everything else, loft is a tool you can use to fine tune your shots, but you've no need to use it for the sake of it, you will find it useful, but it's not as essential as you might think, at least not until the rest of your game is solid.

Main Distance Chart

Notes for the Table :Default is the distance for the club without any modification of the loft, and obviously the +4 and -4 columns show the distances when the loft is clicked up or down by 4 clicks as shown in the shot setup figure. The roll is just to give you an idea of the amount of roll on the ball after landing, and the 2-click column is the approximate yardage change for every 2 clicks of loft. Theres no point learning a whole table, and by the way I only include the clubs I have in my bag as I think they are the best choice, you should pick one of the 2W,7i and SW, so thats why they are shown in italics. This club set covers the full range of distances without having to alter the loft of too many of them. It is MUCH better to learn the trend in the 2-click column or learn the distance in the +4loft column. In Links98, I always used 1 click of loft=5 yards distance, but in LS99 its much more accurate, ie. its harder to swipe a 3W high in the air and get it to stop quickly, so the loft effect on big clubs is not too dramatic, although we'll see how it can be, and how you can use that to your advantage when playing windy. Since the game actually tells you the default distances, if you learn just the +4 click column, you will have a whole "new" set of clubs, and its easy to interpolate distances, so if I had a shot of 151 yards, which is between an 8 and 7 iron, I see that a 7-iron with +4 loft goes 144, while the default is 158. Since 151 is halfway between these two, then the club you need is a 7iron with TWO clicks of loft (halfway between the default and the +4 clicks). Relying on charts makes the game very boring and slow and will annoy people, so try to either learn the +4clicks values, from which you can work out all the other values, or just learn the 2-click column, which shows the effect on yardage for every 2 clicks of loft you apply. Believe me when I say it doesnt take long before you dont have to think about it, look at it this way, the long woods (2W-5W) change by about 3-4 yards per 2-clicks of loft, and then think of a graded scale of between 5 and 10 yards per 2 clicks for 3i-9i, with the wedges being slightly more.

Top Tips:
To summarise an easy way to remember is this :

The default distances are given by the caddy in the game, so dont remember those
1) 2W - 5W is affected by about 3-4 yards per TWO CLICKS of loft. (driver hardly affected at all)
2) The 3 iron distance is 5 yards per TWO CLICKS of loft
3) The 9 iron distance is about 10 yards per TWO CLICKS of loft ...for all other irons just fill in the gaps
4) The wedges (PW-LW) are changed by 11-12 yards per TWO CLICKS of loft.

So, just by remembering FOUR numbers you can recreate an ENTIRE TABLE of loft settings which appear on various websites, and you see that not only does this mean you dont waste time getting your club, but it allows you to concentrate on more difficult things like lies, green speeds etc...You simply DO NOT NEED to have a page full of tables by your side when you play, try remembering those four things I mention above and see how you get on without a chart at all...Also bear in mind that in my opinion you aren't advised to go past 4 clicks either way ( of course you cant go past +5 , unless you play a +4 loft shot from an uphill lie)..the effects then are very exaggerated so unless you are using the punch shot ( see section later ) I would actually change club if I found myself wanting to use more than 4 clicks of loft, for me, loft is a fine tuning tool and not a club-swapping mechanism.

You'll see that my distances are a tad over the Links caddy values, probably the fairway I chose had a slight downhill drift, so you'd be more than justified in using the caddy values but remembering my little trick to remember the lofts with the four numbers mentioned above, also be aware that some players ( Brad The Master comes to mind ) believe the caddy is wrong, I think he said his 9iron goes 126....I'm not sure whether that is an effect of his fairway he did his measurements on, but I havent really found this to be the case, still, it's here for you to bear in mind, and of course at the end of the day, it's up to you to keep an eye on your own shots and see if you come to any conclusions about that yourself, don't rely on anyone else, you have to be happy with your numbers !

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