Yeah convert to a HE. IT will shut you down if they find out you're playing a commercial at home or vice versa.

The 2022 update has been slated for Q1-Q2 2022 so I say don't wait, just get the conversion to 2021 HE and get playing.

P.s I'm in Canada and have been looking for an empty showpiece cabinet for a while. I have a cut down and would like a nicer cabinet. If anyone has one let me know.

ok, maybe I'll upgrade soon.

for the record, switching back to coin play did NOT allow me to access buying tees at all. I am 3 and 4 against john daly so far. It's hard to beat him when he drops 3 aces and a double eagle in the same round though.

I recieved a mailer the other day for upgrading from 2020 to 2021 for $299.99. I may pull the trigger considering the 2022 update isn't expected until spring at the earliest.

You're signing in with your account right? Try buying tees on the app and see if you can use them once they're in your account already.

You won't be disappointed.

Tropical Falls and Forest Knoll are both super great courses. The other 5 are great, too...But I'm really impressed with those two in particular.

Forest Knoll can go to hell!!! haha, good course but it's so frustrating how the last two holes are so difficult, I really despise those tiny tiered greens that are almost impossible to stick.

I like Mount Zeabalos from the new ones. the drive-able par 5 at 18 is fun.

I've learned a lot of shots from watching high level play on those courses. Tropical is probably the hardest for me right now simply because it requires some REALLY smart cuts.

Monte is cool, but that 18th shot is a crap shoot for me. I've stuck it once in all the times I've played it!!

No

I have a gt card that i put into a machine when I play in public. I must have hundreds of tees I bought on there.

When i had gt2019 set for freeplay, tees were automatic. It wasn't a commercial unit I don’t think though.

Being able to hit the ball from a high tee changes everything on some holes. Some courses that I may normally shoot 27-30 under on, cannot be scored as well without tees.

WAY OUT OF MY LEAGUE!

I thought I was doing ok with a 12 under sometimes.

Yeah I'm pretty sure you have to be signed in to use tees on a CE. A HE allows you tees for free so that's why you probably were able to on the other machine.

If you have a HE play the challenge ladder against the computer. I learned a lot by playing them and managed to get up to John Daily. you have to score about -25 to beat Young John Daily but you can copy all of the shots the computer does so I tend to play better when I play against CPU.

Still learning the different tee strategies, on my HE I only get a certain amount of alternate tees available? I have found on certain courses that if you do not use high tee-you will fall short or not get the height needed to clear obstacles.

I need to get away from always using backspin, seems like that is all I use because I am used to it. Need to use more bite, etc.

Do you mean tee box locations when you say alternate tees? If you just mean being able to use a tee you should have unlimited on HE even if it's competition mode.

And yeah going high tee or low tee can be the difference between making the green in one or making it in two on a lot of holes. I think it's 14 on Forest Knoll where you dog leg left and go through an archway, you can actually shoot over that with a high tee and make the green in 1. Although I think they release alternate tee boxes during the year that were raised so some shots that you couldn't make before became makeable.

If you want to get good go look up the mouth on youtube and watch a few of his tutorials. Once you see how the pros shoot you might approach some holes totally differently.

Yea referring to number of alternate tee heights available during a round. I do need to watch some more tutorials on You-tube-I am nowhere near 20-30 under. I tend to choose to club up when approaching the green and have always overdriven with backspin as my technique. I have gotten too used to this technique-been using it for like twenty years(damn I am getting old).

That's not a bad technique really, I find it more consistent than being on a lower club and trying to slam the ball.

One thing I started doing after watching the big tournament they had a few months ago was the thumb shot. It's a pretty consistent way to hit the ball around 80 mph which gets you to like 70-80% of your club length. You club up and put bite or backspin on and then thumb it and you can really snipe the hole sometimes.

My problem is I use it ALL the time, even on chipping. Need to use more bite(TWSS)

Hmmmm…one thing I am NOT digging about 2020 vs 2019 is when I tie John Daly.

In 2019 it kept record of the ties.

2020 just gives Daly the win.

He is 15-6 against me, but 6 of those are ties. B.S.!
Haha

Enjoy being over .500 vs him.

The 2020 has Young JD and JD.
The 2020 JD must drop at least 3 HIO and multiple hole outs each round when I play him.
Haven't beaten him yet- had a chance and missed an easy putt on 17 and of course he HIO's on 18 FTW.....

I guess I hadn't noticed young john daly yet. I just go straight to the big dog when I play.

I am under .500 against him, but not nearly the way it's recorded.

Track ball dial-in tips needed.
I can’t seem to get my track ball revs past mid 120’s. I see the online vids of guys ripping 150+. Their ball seems to be more glidy then mine. I’ve trimmed the metal foil tape and played around adjusting screw tightness. Should I get a new ball assembly? Mine isn’t old and is huo.

The tape is usually the biggest issue. How many games have you put on the trackball? Most people say it takes around 200 to start to break in the bearings but you still should be able to hit 144mph even on a new trackball, it just takes more effort.

Did the rollers look clean and undamaged? Are the optical discs spinning freely without rubbing on the encoder?

if you've opened it up and everything looks ok and the housing isn't too tight like you mentioned it's got to be the bearings. Either clean them and regrease them or if they're new and not broken in you can spin them with a power drill or with compressed air to try and break them in a bit. Or just buy all new bearings. You really shouldn't have to replace the whole thing, it's either the rollers, the bearings or the ball basically and you can replace any of those individually.

I purchased my home edition 2019 from a seller who had less than 100 games on it. I still put new bearing on it and trimmed the tape about a year ago. I'll poke at it again tonight.

I have bought several new and refurb track balls along with a set of R4AZZ bearings trying to reach those speeds to no avail.

The ancient POS machine at the bar has a better spinning trac ball than i'm able to make. Told the OP if he ever swaps it out, i'd like it.

I think some of that speed is generated by the way theyre making contact with the ball. Too many peeps hit down on the ball vs hitting through it......

I'm pretty sure because the bar trackballs get so many plays and the bearings get really broken in. Same reason those pro guys have such free spinning trackballs, they have thousands of plays on them.

I've heard of people having success putting the bearing on a power drill and spinning it for a while.

should I lube the bearings?

NO

Honestly, just bang out games. You'll break it in eventually.

It's my opinion that HAPP trackballs suck compared to imperial trackballs for speed.

edit: on a side note, I am a little bit bent that I haven't heard from IT yet on an upgrade. I emailed them over a week ago.

IT service is complete shit until they actually respond to you and then they're good. I've sent them several emails that were just ignored.

Best thing you can do is call them, they are way better by phone.

Speaking of IT being slow has anyone been looking forwards to the new PGA version? It looks pretty nice and I swear we were starting to see real pictures of the cabinets and people were trying them out but then radio silence. I think they're almost a year delayed at this point?

Is this cheating?

FAB2A3BC-0A2D-4D61-996A-1C1C72FFF699 (resized).jpeg

Nah lots of guys use gloves. I think it's just a matter of preference, it doesn't really give an advantage unless you have sweaty palms or something.

seems like it could accidentally pinch also.

Running it off a hotspot will work

Yeah hotspot should work. You can get wifi adapters for these too.

Any version newer than 2006 will be on the newest engine. You probably want something that is around 2015 or newer and that would ensure you have new enough hardware to upgrade to 2021 if you ever want to.

I am so excited!

I have wanted to do this project for years now and finally found the motivation, time and assistance. For years I have stared at the fugly Golden Tee marquee with the year on it and thought-'I want to do a Caddyshack generic marquee that is timeless with no date stamp.' I do not update every year(probably will every 2 or 3) and so I did not want to see an outdated marquee saying 2020 Golden Tee.

Caddyshack is one of my favorite movies and it just fits the theme perfect. I worked with a fellow pinsider to get it the way I wanted it and I think it turned out great(could not be happier). I decided to use the new PGA logo as well for a more up to date look. If anyone is interested in picking one up please let me know and I can connect you with the pinsider who helped me out.

Check out my new Caddyshack Golden Tee

GEDC6780 (resized).JPGGEDC6781 (resized).JPGGEDC6793 (resized).JPG

I picked up a 2021 Home Edition. I never played it in bars or anything so I'm a noob. I'm working my way through the Real Time Rivals Ladder. How far should I be able to get with stock balls and club set? I'm thinking I don't want to add variables like new equipment too soon. I'm just getting used to the game.

You can shoot below -30 with the stock balls and clubs if you know what you're doing. They affect various aspects of your shot but with the exception of one it's mostly preference, not something that will be an outright benefit.

The exception is the stout ball. The stouts will cut the wind in half making those holes where you get high wind far more manageable.
There are two camps of thought on the stouts. one says they are cheating and the other says they want the biggest advantage possible so they use them. They're allowed in tournaments so I use them, I figure why not take the biggest advantage I can get. I've played like 50 games with them and haven't come close to my highest round so it's not like they make it too easy.

If you want to change clubs or balls it won't make a massive difference, the best thing you can probably do is grab the stock+ balls since they are the same as stock but have more distance.

Thanks for the tips! Is there an online forum like Pinside, but for GT?

There are two places I know of, discord and facebook.

Facebook has the Golden Tee Home edition owners page as well as the Golden Tee fan page. Discord you can use this link https://discord.gg/e2vpzAZz

If you want to see how the best people play you can watch some of the streamers on facebook or check out the Mouth on youtube. he does tutorials and you can see how he plays different types of shots. If you've never played in the bars before you'll probably see the pros shooting in ways you will never think of, like with no backswing. Stuff like that is good for certain situations.

so I just got my 2021 kit in the mail today. I'm pretty pumped and kind of want to jump right in, but a couple of things are making me pause for a moment.

It says that if I am going from a commercial unit to a home online unit to call IT first. (I think I kind of did that already by ordering the kit?, and they set me up with the proper chips/hard drive)

Secondly it said something about internet access. I will definitely be using wifi. The machine currently seems to connect using my wifi every time I turn it on. So do I need an additional dongle, or can I assume it's already in there?

Wow that's cool, nice job!

You have to get them to change the machine over from the commercial one in their system to the HO one so you should call to make sure that is all done. If you think it's connecting it probably has the wifi dongle in it already. If not you'll need to run an ethernet cable to it.

I'm pretty sure the whole install is done through the USB key but it's possible the machine needs to phone home to confirm it's an HE now. It's been a little while since I did mine so I can't remmeber if I had to be online to do it.

If you process your update from Commercial to Home Edition and connect the machine to the internet without contacting I.T. first, your machine will throw an "IO Mismatch" error and your machine will be bricked (unplayable) until you contact I.T. and get them to assist in clearing the error from your machine.

So yes, contact them first before completing your upgrade.

You never mentioned what year your machine was/is before completing the update. What year are you upgrading from? If it's 2019 or older, you likely do NOT have a WiFi dongle on the machine for use with WiFi. You may have a cell phone modem on your I/O board (which is what shows up with a "signal" on the start-up screen, that's not a WiFi signal) but that's not WiFi.

Get back to us with those details and we can assist further.

It is 2020 being updated to 2021.

it is definitely an older machine. 20XX converted to a pedestal.

It connects every time I turn it on and says

IT NET CONNECTION
BAD STANDING

meaning the old operator quit paying the bill or something.

I have an email in to the gal that was helping me asking the questions I asked here. I didn't attempt the upgrade yet.

Did you ever put in your wifi credentials? If not it might be referring to the cell service being in bad standing, a lot of these machines have a cell connection with a SIM card, not wifi.

Beware IT can be pretty bad at returning emails. It can take them 48 hours to turn on a subscription by email but if you call them it can be done right on the spot.
I'd call in if you're itching to play.

If you want shit done quickly and correctly, call Walt in tech support. I.T.'s main number is 800-262-0323 and Walt's extension is 284.

He's my go-to guy for tech answers. Tell him Brad Lutz sent you and that I say hi. And that I think he's the best guy there.

Brad knows his stuff. One of the most knowledgeable people on the GT facebook pages. Take his advice!

So I don't know wtf now.

the game is in my garage. IT's fucking huge. I can't get it into the house.

I need to hook it up to an ethernet cable apparently?

I called just now and they marked the thing as change over to home use machine now.

I jsut need an 80' ethernet extension cable I guess to run it to the garage. Seems like one of these idiots in sales would have asked waht my needs were, or tried to sell me the wifi dongle or something.

I mean I was clear the entire time that it's a commercial machine going to home use.

Buy a cheap wifi router, make sure it can operate in bridge mode.

short Ethernet from game to router, router will connect to your wifi and put it online.

Do you have a laptop with an ethernet port on it? You can bridge your WiFi and ethernet connections to use your laptop as a WiFi bridge. Neat little trick when you don't want to find a 100' ethernet cable

Win10 instructions:

Win7 instructions (easier):