Tiny Links Live

Tiny Links is golf seen from directly above, and it is real golf — not minigolf. No windmills, no loop-the-loops. Fairway, rough, bunkers, water, wind, and a green you have to read. Every course is generated. Nine holes drawn from a single number, so no two rounds ask the same questions: a par 4 you can drive if you dare, a par 5 you cannot reach in two, a green with water across the front of it. The generator knows eleven different shapes of hole — doglegs, split fairways, forced carries, a peninsula, a neck that pinches shut exactly where your drive wants to land. HOW IT PLAYS • Four clubs — driver, iron, wedge, putter. The game suggests one from your lie and distance; you overrule it whenever you like. • Hold to charge. Past the yellow mark the meter overcharges: time the release right and you buy ten percent more distance, mistime it and the ball bends in the air. • Aim with buttons rather than a drag, so your thumb is never covering the line you are aiming along, and the same nudge means the same thing every time. • Wind changes hole to hole, and it only ever pushes a ball that is in the air. What a putt does is up to you. • Greens run. Let the ball settle and arrows show you which way, briefly, so reading the break is a glance and not a menu. RACE SOMEBODY A whole course is one number, which means a finished round is a handful of bytes. Play nine holes and you get a code: hold it up to the phone next to you, or send it in a message. Your friend plays your exact course with your round beside them as a ghost, hole for hole, playing away-ball first the way golf does. Same number, same nine holes, on every phone. Nothing is uploaded and nothing is looked up. YOUR ROUNDS ARE KEPT Finished rounds go into a library on your phone with the course's name and what you shot. Replay a match and watch both balls again, or pass the course on to somebody else. Make a golfer, give them a name, and play. Nine holes at a time.