Greetings Golf Shootout Players!

This is a post to help explain a bug that’s been in the game for the last year, how we’re fixing it, and what to expect from the affected clubs.

Summary

The Bounce Reduction club ability has been adjusted to work properly on Irons and Wedges. This affects the following clubs:

Cyclotron will now correctly reduce the bounce of Irons and Wedges. Formerly it increased the bounce of these clubs.

Cloudcatcher will now correctly reduce its own bounce at all levels. Formerly it improperly provided less bounce reduction than expected. The numbers on the Bounce Reduction ability have been adjusted, but the club has not been nerfed at any level.

Maelstrom will now correctly reduce the bounce of Irons and Wedges. In addition, its self-bounce-reduction ability has been removed, but Maelstrom is now correctly affected by Bag Bounce Reduction. This results in Maelstrom’s own shots bouncing less.

Details

Starting last year with the introduction of the Maelstrom club, players began reporting unexpected results from its Bounce Reduction abilities. While the club appeared to be applying Bounce Reduction properly to most clubs, it had unusual effects on others. Worst of all, Maelstrom itself appeared to weirdly have more bounce than other wedges.

So what gives?

To start, let’s look at how bounce works normally

 

To match the behavior of real-world clubs, clubs with different loft angles have an inherent bounce multiplier. Drivers, Woods, and Hybrids are unadjusted, while Irons and Wedges bounce less. Shots from Putters don’t bounce at all.

Now let’s throw a Level 5 Maelstrom into the bag. For reference, at Level 5, Maelstrom provides a 25% bounce reduction to the other clubs:

There’s something going wrong here! At some point in 2022, Bounce Reduction had begun directly setting the bounce value rather than multiplying it. 

For the most common use-case of bounce reduction — using Maelstrom to deaden the bounce of a Driver or Wood — the club worked as expected. However, every once in a while, you’d need to hit with Maelstrom itself. In that case… well… many players noticed that the club would actually experience about half-again more bounce than it should.

Starting in PGA Tour Golf Shootout 3.33, bounce reduction should now work as-expected for all club types:

Alongside this change, the Cloudcatcher and Maelstrom clubs are receiving minor numerical changes, which you can see in the updated Club Stats Sheet. These changes mostly leave the clubs working exactly as before, except better at deadening the bounce of Irons and Wedges.

Thanks and happy golfing!