dailygolf gets a new course every day and new features most weeks. This page lists every change worth knowing about, newest first. A change to how courses are built never touches a day that has already started, so the course you’re playing never shifts under you.
Accounts, real bunkers and the lie of the land
Accounts. Press Keep your progress on the title screen to make one with your email address and a name. Your points, skins, stats and Unlimited are saved to it as you play, so they come with you to every device you sign in on and come back if your browser is cleared. There’s no password: each time you sign in, we email you a code. Accounts are optional, and the game works just as before without one.
The ground shows its shape. Slopes, hollows and ridges are now shaded so you can see them, and high ground looks lighter than low ground. Greens show their contours too: the high side is lighter and the low side darker, so you can see which way a putt will break even with the slope arrows off.
Names in games with friends. Words in names that would offend are now starred out, however they’re spelled.
The Classics on the daily course. As announced, about one daily course in three now swaps a hole for one of the Classics.
The whole flick counts. Where your swing finishes still sets the line the ball starts on, but now a flick that wanders on the way up curves the ball the way it wandered, even if it comes back to finish straight. The trace only says Straight when the flick stayed straight all the way. The strategy guide has the details.
Bunkers play like bunkers. The ball has to climb over the face to get out, and a shot that can’t buries itself in it. Out of sand the sand wedge now gets 75% of its carry (it was 90%), hybrids 45% and woods 30%. Any bunker shot can come out fat or thin, the long clubs most often. Waste areas play as before.
Coming Wednesday: drivable par 4s
From Wednesday, October 7, about three par 4s in ten are short enough to drive: 210 to 300 yards, sized to the day’s wind. They’re built to make you pay for trying. The green is an island, a peninsula with water on three sides, or a raised fortress ringed with deep bunkers, and the wind always blows 10 to 25 mph. Greenside bunkers everywhere get deeper from the same day, with a steep face toward the green, so only the sand wedge gets out reliably. Unlimited courses and games with friends have them already.
Two ways to the green
On most par 4s and par 5s the fairway now forks and joins up again further on. It splits around a stand of woods, a chain of ponds, a ridge, a waste area, or a bank between a high road and a low one. The route on the inside of the bend is often 30 to 60 yards shorter, but it’s narrower and closer to trouble. The other route is wider, and any water near the green tends to sit on its side. Some par 3s get a bail-out area that skirts the water in front of the green. The starting aim follows the safer route, or the one your ball is on. The strategy guide has more on choosing between them.
A par 5 from above (press V), with the fairway split by a lake into a left route and a right route.
Coming tomorrow: the Classics on the daily course
From Monday, October 5, about one daily course in three swaps a hole for one of the Classics, famous holes rebuilt by hand: Amen Corner at Augusta National, the finish at TPC Sawgrass with its island green, Pebble Beach above the Pacific, and the Old Course at St Andrews. They take turns, so you’ll see all twelve before any of them comes round again. The course is still a par 3, a par 4 and a par 5.
Skins. Holes under par earn points: 10 for a birdie, 30 for an eagle and 60 for an albatross, plus extra for a chip-in, a hole-out from further away, or a hole in one. Spend them on outfits for your golfer, balls with their own flight trails, and sets of clubs, from Blackout and Hickory to Gold. Press Skins on the title screen to look around the shop.
Half the wind. The wind now pushes the ball half as hard as before for the speed shown. At 10 mph a 7 iron loses about 11 yards into it and drifts about 9 across it.
One mulligan per course. Everyone gets the same single do-over on every course, daily, Unlimited or with friends. It takes back the shot and any penalty.
New hole shapes. From this day’s course on: sharp doglegs, S-bends, sweeping curves, fairways split by a river, ponds in the corners of doglegs and lakes to carry between islands of fairway.
Clubs in detail. Each club now has a proper head, with grooves on the irons and wedges.
Play with friends
Games with friends. Up to 10 people can play the same course at the same time, each on their own device. You see everyone’s golfer line up, swing and hit, with a live leaderboard and a line of news about who just made what. Play three holes or nine, on a new course or today’s, and invite people with a link or a five-character code.
Unlimited. A new random course whenever you want one, with stats of its own.
Overswing. Pulling the meter past 100% now costs you: the ball hooks, cuts or slices at random, and usually comes up short.
The Classics. Famous holes rebuilt by hand arrived in games with friends as whole courses, and by the evening as single holes mixed in with the generated ones, in Unlimited too.
The first daily course: a par 3, a par 4 and a par 5, the same for everyone in the world, with a new one every day at midnight Eastern time. Launch day also brought:
A full bag of clubs, with ball flight that responds to spin, wind and the slope you’re standing on.
Greens with a grid of slope arrows for reading putts, and a switch to hide them.
Instant replays of chip-ins, hole-outs and long putts.
A shareable result with every shot, plus streaks, stats and a daily leaderboard.
