What's new
Daily Holes is worked on more or less continuously. New hazards change what the generator can build, so the course you play tomorrow may contain something that did not exist last week. This is what has changed and when.
- Fix
A clear way back when the game won't start
If the course fails to start — a dropped connection, being offline, or a problem while building today's nine — you now get a plain explanation with Try again and Reload buttons instead of a blank screen.
- Course
The woodland is alive
Pine Forest rounds now grow in layers: detailed trunks and needle crowns, exposed roots, ferns, moss and dappled sunlight. Tree branches stay rooted while you zoom, normal sand bunkers remain, and uncommon broad, naturally shaped piles of fallen leaves can appear on the fairway with the same effect as bunker sand.
- Fix
Scores save the way you played them
Target Range results now replay with the exact same ball flight you saw, so your saved points and personal best match the five shots on screen. Finished daily cards also save in one protected step and retry safely after a temporary connection problem, without spending a replay token twice.
- Fix
The map draws far faster
Most of the work in a frame was going into two things that had not changed since the frame before: the ground wash and the grain over it, which are fixed to the window rather than to the hole, and the two soft blurred bands lying under the fairway. Both are now drawn once and kept until the hole, the window or the view actually moves — while the camera is travelling they are drawn the old way, because a copy thrown away on the next frame costs more than it saves. On a processor slowed to phone speed the frame rate more than doubles while you are lining up a shot, and is about a third higher while the camera is moving. The picture is untouched: both ways of drawing were run side by side over a whole camera move and came out identical to the pixel.
- Feature
Morning in the pine forest
Pine Forest courses now have weather. A low dawn light warms one side of the air and leaves the other cold, and the mist settles into the hollows and thins over the rises, so you can read the lie of the land through it. The trees are drawn as pines rather than green blobs — needles spread from each crown, lit from wherever the sun is. The fairway stays clear, and the other two venues are unchanged.
- Feature
The menu buttons have icons now
Practice, Target range, Leaderboards and Friends each carry their own mark and a chevron, so you can pick the one you want without reading all four. Play today leads with a play symbol, and Profile and Tutorial get small icons to match.
- Fix
The course reads at a glance
Fairway, rough and the deep stuff were too close in colour to tell apart without reading the text — they are clearly stepped now, so you can see what you are standing in. The yardage rings have been faded back and the scattered trees thinned out, so the corridor and your shot line are the loudest things on the map.
- Fix
The whole first screen fits your phone
The green now scales to the available screen height, and your streak sits inside Today's venue instead of taking up another row. The full menu stays visible on an iPhone without losing the course artwork.
- Feature
Coastal Beach, and the green is back
The coastal setting is now a real beach: every hole runs alongside the water, with a sandy shore, wet sand, turquoise shallows fading to deep blue, rolling foam, rocks at the waterline and palms on the grass. Birdie has gone to rest for now, and the golf green picture is back on the first screen.
- Course
Real country: woodland, dunes and high rock
The three settings are now landscapes rather than flat colours. The pine forest grows groves of pines with ferns and fallen logs between them, the coast rolls with low dunes, rough fescue and marram grass with the sea out beyond, and the highlands scatter rocky outcrops with snow on the lit side, glacial tarns and hardy spruce. It carries on as far as you can see, and the same date always grows the same country. Birdie has smartened up as well: he now watches your putts through a brass lens, applauds anything under par and puts a wing over his eyes when you find the water. Tap him on the menu and he has a word about today's conditions.
- Course
Three settings, and a bird on the pin
The course no longer sits on a pale grey nothing. Every day lands in one of three settings — a pine forest, coastal dunes or highland peaks — each with its own ground, turf and tree colour. The setting comes from the date, so everyone in the world plays the same one on the same day, and the menu now names it: today's venue, its setting, the par and the air. Meet Birdie too: a small visored bird who perches on the flag once you are close to the green.
- Fix
The page below the game is back on phones
What Daily Holes is, how the scoring works and where to find the guides was only being shown on desktop — on a phone the page stopped at the game. It is there for everyone again: scroll down from the menu and it is underneath. The board still fills the screen, and once a hole is up the page stays put, so dragging on the course moves the course and nothing else.
- Fix
The ball no longer teleports
If you played with “Calmer animations” on, or with reduce-motion enabled on your phone or computer, the ball used to jump straight to where it landed instead of flying there — on every shot. That shortened mode has been removed altogether: there is now one animation, the same for every player, so the ball always flies. The “Calmer animations” switch is gone from settings with it.
- Feature
Replay today's nine as much as you like
Finish your ranked round and today's course unlocks in practice, free and unlimited on every plan — go back and try the holes you dropped shots on. It stays locked until your card is in, so nobody can scout the course before posting a score, and practice rounds never reach the leaderboard. Past and random courses keep their daily limits.
- Feature
Past daily nines in practice
Practice now lists every previous daily course, so you can go back and replay any past nine. Practice rounds stay unranked.
- Fix
Range records and membership shortcuts
Five-shot range personal bests now save against the moving target you actually played. Signed-in players also see their Free, Starter or Pro badge on the main menu, with quick buttons for the cosmetic locker and music.
- Feature
The range is the real game now
Five shots at a flag that moves, on an empty fairway with nothing on it. It uses the same clubs, the same swing meter and the same physics as the daily round — before, it was a separate little diagram with its own rules, and your aim was chosen at random rather than by you. Closer is worth more, up to a thousand points a shot, and your best five-shot total is kept.
- Feature
Club Starter, Pro Club and the target range
Club Starter adds one daily replay, 10 practice rounds, ad-free play, member styles and a five-shot target range for €2.49 a month including VAT. Pro Club includes everything, with two daily replays, unlimited practice, every cosmetic and deeper stats for €6.99 a month including VAT. Past daily courses are not part of either membership.
- Feature
Cheaper replays and Club perks
A replay now costs €0.89 including VAT and Pro Club €6.99 a month including VAT. Pro members get a gold name and PRO badge on every leaderboard and profile, plus unlimited practice. Everyone else gets 3 practice rounds a day — starting one counts, even if you don't finish it.
- Feature
First try or best overall
The leaderboard now has a Best overall / First try switch. Best overall is what you see first and counts replays; First try ranks everyone by the first card they posted that day, so a replay can't buy a better rank there. It works on the daily, weekly, friends and league boards.
- Feature
Replay today's nine
Finished the daily and think you can do better? A Replay today button now sits on the menu and the end-of-round card. Buy a replay or join Pro Club for two replays every day. Only a better score replaces the card on the leaderboard.
- Feature
The menu tells you what is different about today
Under the green on the menu there is now a line naming the most interesting thing on today's course — a burn with a bridge on 9, a crossing on 4, a par 6 on 1 — with a small picture of it, drawn from the course itself. Every day looks different because every day is different, and until now the menu never said so.
- Course
Longer rollouts to watch, and the cup drops a little more often
The roll after a shot lands now plays out over up to a second and a half rather than being hurried away in under one, so you can actually watch a ball run out on a cart path or release across a green. The cup is also a touch more forgiving: it is slightly wider, and a chip still moving a little as it crosses the hole will now drop instead of sliding by. Aces, holed approaches and chip-ins are all about twice as likely as they were — still rare, just no longer nearly impossible.
- Fix
The ball no longer skips its flight
Some shots appeared at rest instead of flying. The flight was timed against the clock from the moment you swung, so anything that briefly froze the phone in between — coming back to the tab, a slow first draw of a busy hole — was subtracted from the flight, and a long enough freeze skipped it entirely. It is now timed by frames, and a single frame can never skip more than a few frames' worth, so a stutter slows the ball instead of swallowing it. Where the ball lands is decided the instant you swing and was never affected.
- Fix
Your opponent no longer covers the hole
In a live match the opponent's card was a panel across the top of the screen, sitting over the hole number, the par, the yardage, the wind and the hazard tags — everything you need to choose a club with. It is now a readout in the bottom-right corner, mirroring the lie and distance on the left: their name, how far over or under par they are playing, and the hole they are standing on. The recenter button steps up above it when you have panned the view.
- Feature
A guide to every hazard
Eight new pages, one per obstacle, each with an illustration drawn by the game itself so the picture is always what you will actually meet. Alongside them a strategy guide that publishes the engine's real numbers — how far every surface rolls out, what each lie costs you in carry and accuracy, all seven club distances, and where the pure band actually sits on the swing meter.
- Feature
Music plays by default
Rally — a driving pulse with a line over the top — is now the bed a new player hears out on the course. Anyone who had already chosen something, or chosen silence, keeps what they picked. All seven beds are still in Profile → Music.
- Feature
Head-to-head records, a friends board and leagues
Your record against each friend now shows on their row — you lead 7–4, and so on. The leaderboard has a Friends tab showing the day's board filtered to people you have actually added. Leagues are back too: start one, share the six-character code, and the league gets a board of its own. The Friends button now also tells you when a challenge has settled while you were away.
- Feature
Music on the course
Seven optional backing beds, all synthesised on the spot so there is nothing to download. Four are calm and three run on a hundred-to-the-minute grid. It plays only while a hole is in front of you — never on the menus and never over the scorecard. Off by default; pick one in Profile → Music.
- Feature
Sound, and a tutorial round
The swing now makes a noise: a tick at each end of the meter's sweep to time against, a strike that tells you how clean it was, and a splash you will come to dread. New players get a separate tutorial round with a coach that explains aiming and the meter, and it stays out of the daily round entirely.
- Fix
The gust and the yardage rings came back
A scoping mistake had silently stopped the gust band and the 100, 150 and 200-yard rings from being drawn at all — no error, they simply were not there. Both are back, and there is now an automated check that renders every hazard and fails if one of them stops appearing on screen.
- Course
The burn, and the bridge across it
A river cut diagonally across the fairway, wide enough to be a real carry. The cart path always crosses it on a deck, and half of all burns carry a bridge near the middle that kicks a ball hard across to the far bank instead of drowning it. Hazards no longer overlap each other either — trees, bunkers and bridges are pushed apart when the generator puts them on top of one another.
- Course
The crossing
A rare hole played entirely over open water, island to island, with the green on the last stone. Every shot is a forced carry and a crossing is worth an extra shot of par. About one round in six has one, and never two.
- Fix
Friend codes without a zero
Codes are hexadecimal, so they could contain the digit 0 but never the letter O — which meant anyone reading a code aloud had a coin flip to lose. Zeros are now swapped for G when a code is made, and both characters are accepted when one is typed.
- Feature
Head-to-head challenges
Challenge a friend to any of the last fourteen courses, or a random one. If you are both online you tee off together and watch each other's card fill in; if not, the challenge waits until they play it.
- Feature
Replays, and a rebuilt menu
Watch a playback of the best card of any day, shot by shot. The menu was rebuilt around it.
- Feature
Illustrated hazards
Every obstacle on the how-to-play page got a plan-view illustration drawn by the game itself, so the picture is always what you will actually meet.