Midnight Canyon, wind and chip-in replays

September was a big one. There are two new courses, including Midnight Canyon, a night course in a red-rock canyon where every golfer wears a headlamp. Wind now changes how every hole plays.

New

• Two new courses in the rotation: Midnight Canyon, played at night, and Wind Tunnel Run, an obstacle course where big fans push your ball around.
• Wind: each hole rolls a random wind speed and direction, shown on a compass in the HUD. It only pushes the ball in the air, so putts are never affected. You can also shape shots now, with a draw or fade, a high flop or a low stinger.
• Match options at the starter booth: the host picks which courses to play, in order or shuffled, plus wind strength (Off, Calm, Strong or Wild) and the hole-out timer. The host can also end a hole from the pause menu.
• Hole-out moments: when your shot is heading for the cup, the camera follows it in. The cup is a real hole the ball drops into, everyone gets a feed of who just holed out, and you can watch your chip-ins again or save them as video clips from the new Replays screen.
• An Unstuck button in the pause menu moves you to nearby open ground when you get wedged somewhere.
• A new animated 3D intro when the game starts, and a redesigned start menu.

Improved

• Golfers feel livelier: knockdowns are floppier and funnier, jumps squash and stretch, running is quicker but slows in bunkers and rough, and clubs sit properly in your hands.
• Puddle Pines, Blizzard Basin and Misty Loch Links got fog, treelines, distant hills, birds and clouds around them, so the courses no longer end at a hard edge.
• Full 20-player matches run smoother, and Settings has graphics presets, with Low picked for you on laptops with built-in graphics.
• Settings has a new Controls tab listing every key and a short description for each setting. Key prompts follow your keyboard layout and controller, Spanish is fully translated, and menus, scoreboards and the swing meter got a cleaner look.

Fixed

• Balls no longer sink into the ground, fall through the floor or get stuck under a putting green. Cannons fire again, and a ball only splashes when it lands in water.
• Online: no more starting a match under the level, crashes at the end of a hole or after rejoining, golfers spinning on other screens, mismatched power-ups, a missing ball in the waiting room, a scoreboard that didn't reset, or a blank result card when someone else holed out. Quitting also leaves your party properly.