Glossary of Terms

Aim: To define a few terms which may crop up in this guide, and to make sure you know what they mean.

I'm assuming that 99% of you will not need to look at this section but just for the sake of completeness I thought I would define a few terms which will be used frequently in this guide just in case there is something which causes you some confusion.....of course a lot of this will be in the LinksLS manual which comes with the complete boxed game....you DO have the manual don't you ?

Swing Meter & Pips
The Swing Meter is the golf ball at the bottom of your screen with the border round the edge which fills with colour as you hold down the mouse button during a stroke. When you hear the word "pips" that is usually referring to the little dots that go round inside that border, there are 15 visible pips, labelled 1-15, with pip 0 being under the line at the bottom of the ball and pip 16 under the line at the top of the ball.

Snap Points
These are the two lines I just mentioned, generally the best approach to keep your timing and rhythmn good, you will aim to let go of the mouse ( or click number 2 for you 3-click people) at the top of the meter where the line is, and then the snap point where you click again is the line at the bottom, except in sand when two extra dots appear to the right of the normal snap point for certain types of bunker shot. For normal shots, clicking too soon so the meter line comes before the snap point is the same as hooking the ball left, the more you miss the more left it will go, and if you miss late to the right, a slice will occur.

2-Click,3-Click and Powerstroke
2-Click is the normal method used in Links, where you click the mouse button to start the meter rising and let go when it reaches your desired strength, then you click for the second time at the bottom, to stop the meter at the snap point. The 3-Click method is the same except you use an extra click of the mouse to stop the meter at your desired pace instead of letting go.Some people say this gives them better control of their distance but I've always used 2-click, so I stick with what I know. Powerstroke is the swing method where you actually "swing" your mouse by clicking and then sliding the mouse to one side and back again, releasing the mouse button when you get to the snap point. Since I don't allow PS on my tour (thanks to the bastards that tried cheating with it) I wont elaborate..its in the manual. (LOL, by the way if you want to try an even better way to "simulate" (dont make me laugh) golf, try going out and playing the real game)

The Clock analogy
Just another way to think about the swing meter in terms of a clockface, so 6 o'clock is the snap point at the bottom, 12 o'clock the optimum strength point at the top, and 9 o'clock ( or 8 pips!) halfway between. The new sand snap is therefore located at about 5 o'clock. Try hitting a snap at three o'clock..if you manage it, let me know, you oaf, there is no 3 o'clock...the meter has a gap in it there !

Loft settings
This is covered in the shot setup section, basically by moving the ball in your stance you cause the trajectory to change to a higher, softer one (adding loft) or to a lower, running one ( delofting)..generally used to fine tune shot distances that are between clubs default yardages.

Lie Indicator
The bottom left of your screen shows you the lie your ball is in, but you can also see it be having the grid on at all points and by using your aiming pin to feel around the area close to your ball.the arrow shows the direction of the lie, so you have two arrows, one for sidehill, and one for up/downhill..if it's very small you may not see an arrow in your indicator but check your grid for small lies. The arrow shows which way the ball will deviate from your normal straight aim. An uphill arrow is like extra loft, the ball will go higher and shorter, and vice versa for downhill arrows.

Wind Gauge
Shows the speed and direction of any wind in the bottom left of the screen, with your lie indicator. Breezy will be shown as an arrow made of green bars, while windy will have extra bars in the yellow (medium strength) and red ( strong wind). The arrow shows the direction the wind is blowing.

Elevation / Profile
Although you can see this information in the profile camera (see camera views) you will also see in the bottom left (quite a useful spot, bottom left of screen!) a line sketch showing your position, and the flag and your aiming pin position, this will represent your elevation to your aiming pin, and then on to the flag and will also be shown in distance units.

Green Speeds
Greens have a firmness: hard,normal or soft and a speed : fast,medium and slow. the combination of the two gives the overall green speed. Harder greens tend to make the ball kick a bit further and softer greens take more backspin..the speed will affect not only your approach shots, but more crucially, your chips and putts, so you have to change the pace of the shot to adapt to the speed.

Flop/Punch/Fade/Draw
Special shots available in the club selection window, fade and draw make the ball curve to the right and left respectively and can be used to counter the effects of the wind or get round obstacles. Flop and Punch are extreme cases of changing the loft on a club, flops are very high,soft shots and punches are very low, hard shots..usually used in the wind, but useful in other ways too

Wind Angles
When talking about angles we usually treat 0° as straight ahead (tailwind), ie the wind is at your back and the arrow points straight up, so then 90° becomes a left to right wind, 180° is a headwind in your face and 270° is a right to left crosswind.

Putting Grid
The squares that appear on the green when you have a putt to help you read the break. Look at the steps as the lines cut across your ball's path to the ball, these are the things that show which direction your ball will move as it crosses them. Flat horizontal lines show a totally flat green where putts go straight.

Break/Borrow
Used to describe the amount of drift caused by the slope of the greens, so you "borrow" a certain distance to the side of the hole to allow for the "break" of the greens. Overborrowing means you aim too wide of the cup for that slope of putt, underborrowing means you dont allow enough to the side of the cup.

Chipping
Usually selected automatically when you are within about 30 yards of the green, but check to see the letter "C" appears in your swingmeter. If it does the shot is a chip and the distances you should use are the chipping ones, otherwise the shot is a normal shot and will go the distance for that club. You can chip with any club, the longer club used the lower and more running chip you are playing.

Half-Shot
When you dont allow the meter to reach 12 o'clock, this is a half-shot. Can be quite useful to hit low shots under the wind, and also to adjust distances if you can't cover the gap with loft.

Championship Level
You'll generally be set to "pro" by default, but you can change your ability to championship level by editing your player in the player setup screen. Championship level is much harder and the deviation of the ball caused by a mis-snap is much greater than at pro. Champ level should not be confused with Championship tees which are usually just a few yards back from the normal pro tees used, and sometimes the same.

Drop
What you'll have to do if you hit into a hazard, Links will generally drop you back to the nearest point back from where you went in the hazard ( you cant drop closer to the pin)...in reality you can go further back from this point (there is a "backup 50 feet" option) until you get a good spot, but if you are playing against someone, I personally find this a bit rude, so always hit from where Links puts me, it's your fault you went in the hazard after all.

Mulligan
An option that comes up after a shot, basically you get to repeat the shot without penalty. Some games allow for a certain number of them, but usually these should only be used in practice or if you have obviously suffered a computer glitch or "mouse fart" (I'm not defining that) so you can have a repeat attempt at the shot fairly. You should always check with your opponent that they are OK with your mulligan before you go ahead and repeat the stroke.Be aware that using a mulligan in any round will mean you cannot verify the game score when you are finished.

Gimmie
A shot option for a putt within 24" of the cup, allowing you to take the gimmie and not putt it, in LS99 you can actually set gimmies up to 4 feet. Don't take the arseholes view that "anything can happen" and ban the use of gimmies...to me, they are a sign of respect and good sportsmanship, if your opponent has got a putt that close, he deserves the tap-in, remember Jack Nicklaus in the 1969 Ryder Cup...amazing

MatchPlay
When you play a game where the score is determined on a hole-by-hole basis. The lowest score for each hole wins that hole and adds 1 to their score, the difference in the number of holes won is referred to as "xxx up" where xxx is the difference in holes won between the players. A hole is tied (no score change) if the players match scores on any one hole. A player is "dormy" whenever he is the same number of holes up as there is left to play, since only one "point" can be won for each hole, that player cannot lose the match. Since tied matches often go to sudden death playoffs ( first to win a hole wins match) you can't actually be dormy unless you agree that a tie will be a tie.

StrokePlay
Where you play a round and add up each and every shot you take. Lowest score wins, obviously !

Recorded Round
You can tick the record game box just next to the start button before you begin a round and if you dont have a crash in mid game you will be prompted for a filename at the end of the round..your whole game is then saved as a file, with the extension .REC ...You can swap these files with your friends to "play against" them while you're on your own by clicking them into the game at the player select screen ( put any REC files in your Links directory and they will be listed in the players list in the main screen before you start a round)...of course they will only show up if they played the same course you have selected. By recording the game you should also know that the pin positions are set to their default for every hole, so you can compare recorded round scores knowing the same pin positions were used by all

Verified Round
If you play a round without crashing, and do NOT use any mulligans or gimmies then you will get an option on your scorecard to verify your game.Clicking the verify button will list the players who can verify, click the name of the player, and then click verify again..a whole lot of information (coded) is shown. You need to write ALL this down and you can pass this info to someone who can then check the validity of your score through the options in links (verify score)..better way is to then click "save" instead of writing it all down, the info is now stored in a file with the extension .VER...you can send this as proof of your score and its integrity.

Online/Offline game
Online games are when you connect via the internet or through a modem to play someone else over a network link. Offline games are the games you play on your own on your computer without any link to a network or other players.

Ladders/Tours
Ladders and Tours are collections of players that sign up to play regular games against each other and some kind of "ranking" system is involved. Generally ladders are based on online head-to-head games (or teams) and as you beat players above you on the ladder you will move up some rungs until you reach number 1. Tours generally are run by people like me and consist of group of players sending recorded and verified files showing their scores for various events, and leaderboards are then posted. Bear in mind that the more glamorous the ladder, the more arseholes you will encounter, and the more reward offered, the more likely you'll find cheats and tossers who only care about winning. Stick to somewhere fun, with loads of players across a wide range of abilities and where the tour operator is a great guy, who works his butt off, cares about his tour and tries to improve his tour all the time by listening to his players opinions. Not sure what the best ones are out there, but I hear LDSDBomber has a simply wonderful Tour Site based on the PGA Tour with real events and courses and a cybermoney list.Not only is it lots of fun, but its a real challenge and the goal for all is to make one of the international or USA teams for the Ryder Cup style competitions at the end of the year ( one for each ability range )...yeah, good idea, try Bombers tour,it rocks...ha,a-ha ha-ha,hahhahahahahahahahahahahaah

Top Tips: errrrr.....none that I can think of haha

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