The one-sentence version
The ghost roster never changes — the same 134 PDGA-rated pros line up every round. Field Difficulty changes how locked in they are.
ROOKIE: the pros show up hungover and spray plastic. GHOST KING: Gannon Buhr on a heater, McBeth putting from 60, nobody misses a C1. Same names on the card either way.
The five tiers
Rookie
−150 rating bias
Wide variance
5% blow-up chance
The pros show up hungover. Rick's in a bad mood, McBeth's forearm is tight, half the field is on a fresh sponsor disc they haven't figured out yet. Wide round-to-round variance, real blow-up holes, the amateur has a real shot at the podium. Start here if you're new.
Amateur
−80 rating bias
Wider variance
4% blow-up chance
The field plays tournament-ready but not peak. The pros are sharp enough to beat you on a normal day — you'll need a hot round to crack the top 10. Good honest competition.
Advanced
0 rating bias
Baseline variance
3% blow-up chance
Pros playing at their rated level. The baseline — what you'd expect if they showed up at a mid-season tour stop with no extra motivation. Honest competition against the rated field.
Pro Tour
+50 rating bias
Tighter variance
2% blow-up chance
Tour-stop energy. The ghosts came to work. Clean execution, tight dispersion, very few blown holes. Most amateurs are bottom-half here — and that's fine. Make pars, stay patient.
Ghost King
+100 rating bias
Tightest variance
1.5% blow-up chance
Gannon on a heater. McBeth locked in. Ricky draining C2s. The field plays ~100 rating points above their listed number — best rounds of their lives, every round. You probably won't win. That's the point.
What each lever actually does
Rating bias
Shifts every ghost's effective rating up or down. A 1050-rated elite plays like a 900-rated amateur at ROOKIE, and like an 1150-rated mythical being at GHOST KING.
Consistency
How much round-to-round variance each ghost has. Lower difficulty = wider swings, more hot/cold days. Higher difficulty = pros locked in, consistent scoring.
Blow-up chance
Per-hole OB / lost disc rate. 5% at ROOKIE (pros make mistakes), 1.5% at GHOST KING (pros almost never implode).
What doesn't change
The 134-pro roster. The course. Your par. Hole layout. Ghost names on the card. Only the pros' form scales.
Picking the right tier
If you entered a PDGA rating at sign-up, Ghost Card auto-suggests a tier:
- Under 800 rating → Rookie
- 800–899 → Amateur
- 900–999 → Advanced
- 1000–1049 → Pro Tour
- 1050+ → Ghost King
You can override the default on every setup screen. If no PDGA rating is on file, the skill tier you chose during onboarding (RECREATIONAL / INTERMEDIATE / ADVANCED / PRO) sets a reasonable default.
Want a fair fight? Default to the suggested tier. Want a warm-up? Drop one tier. Want a beating? Pick GHOST KING and don't flinch.
Field picker vs. Field Difficulty
These are two separate knobs. Don't confuse them.
- Ghost Field (Top 5 / Top 10 / Rivals / Full Field) — picks which pros are on your card.
- Field Difficulty (ROOKIE → GHOST KING) — picks how hard they play.
Fun combinations: Rivals on GHOST KING puts 10 pros near your rating all locked in (brutal). Top 5 on ROOKIE gives you the five highest-rated pros on their worst day (winnable if you're hot).
Course difficulty vs. Field Difficulty
Course toughness is already baked into the course's SSA (Scratch Scoring Average) — the score a 1000-rated player would shoot there. Ghost Card uses the real SSA when the course has one, and falls back to a mid-range estimate otherwise.
Field Difficulty does not change how hard the course plays. A par-3 is still a par-3. It only changes how the ghosts navigate it.
What you'll see in-app
When you kick off a round, the matchup preview shows the expected scoring at your chosen difficulty — something like Top ghost expected −4 · Field avg +1. That's the field's mean round at the tier you picked. Your actual result will swing around that by a few strokes either way. The leaderboard reshuffles after every hole.