Mini Golf Tips: Putting Power, Bank Shots and Scoring Every Hole

Updated October 2026

Mini Golf plays like a slingshot: you pull back from the ball, let go, and it rolls the other way. Each hole allows four strokes, every hole you sink adds points, and the first hole you fail to finish ends the game. Almost every lost ball in this game comes from the same mistake, which is hitting too hard. This guide explains how putting power is really calculated, what it takes for the ball to drop, and how to use the walls and grey blocks to reach awkward holes.

Scoring and how a game ends

Each hole gives you four strokes. When the ball drops, you earn the number of strokes you had left plus one. That works out as follows:

• sink it with your first putt: 4 points;
• with your second: 3 points;
• with your third: 2 points;
• with your fourth: 1 point.

If the ball comes to rest after your fourth stroke without dropping, the game is over and your total is final. There is no penalty for a slow finish beyond the smaller reward, so a safe two-putt worth 3 points is always better than an aggressive first putt that leaves you scrambling and risks ending the run.

Power is not proportional to your pull

To aim, touch on or close to the ball and drag away from where you want it to go. A dashed guide line appears pointing the way the ball will travel, and it brightens as power increases. The pull counts up to 120 pixels; dragging further adds nothing. Very short drags of a few pixels are ignored and do not use a stroke.

The important detail is that launch speed grows with the square of the pull, not in a straight line. Half of the maximum pull gives only a quarter of the maximum speed. On top of that, the ball loses only 1.5 percent of its speed per frame to friction, so it rolls a long way. In our simulation of the game's physics on an open surface:

• a 20-pixel pull rolls about 180 pixels;
• a 30-pixel pull rolls about 450 pixels;
• a 40-pixel pull rolls about 820 pixels;
• a full 120-pixel pull would roll more than 7,000 pixels if nothing stopped it.

On a typical phone the playing area is only about 360 pixels wide and 670 tall. In other words, almost every putt you will ever need uses a third of the available pull or less. The guide line is drawn at 1.4 times the length of your drag, so it shows direction well but greatly understates how far the ball will go. Learn power by feel and by drag length, not by the length of the line.

What it takes to drop the ball

The cup only accepts a ball that is moving slowly. The ball's centre has to pass within the cup's radius of 15 pixels while its speed is below a fixed threshold; a faster ball rolls straight across. That threshold corresponds to the speed of a ball that still has around 450 pixels of roll left in it, so it is not tiny, but a ball launched with a hard pull will reach the cup far above it.

The result is a window of correct power for every distance. In our simulation, a straight putt at a cup 350 pixels away drops for pulls between roughly 27 and 40 pixels. At 550 pixels the window is roughly 33 to 45 pixels. Under the window the ball stops short; over it the ball races across. Notice how narrow and how low these windows are compared with the full 120-pixel range.

A good habit on any open hole is to aim for the lower half of the window. A ball that stops short leaves a short, easy second putt. A ball that overshoots tends to bounce off the far wall and finish somewhere unpredictable.

Reading the layout

Every hole puts the ball near the bottom centre of the course and the cup somewhere in the upper part of the course, at least 44 pixels from the side and top edges. The first hole has no obstacles. Each later hole adds one more grey block, up to six blocks from the seventh hole on. Blocks sit in the middle band of the course and are always kept clear of the starting ball and of the cup, so there is always some open space around both.

Before your first putt, trace the straight line from ball to cup. If it is open, take it. If one block is in the way, check whether the cup can be reached by going around the end of the block on a straight line before thinking about banks. Bank shots cost speed and accuracy, so use them only when the direct line is closed.

Using walls and blocks

The two kinds of surface behave differently, and knowing the difference makes bank shots far more predictable:

• Outer walls reflect the ball like a mirror and keep 72 percent of the speed going into the wall, while the speed along the wall is untouched. A shallow glance along a wall loses very little pace.
• Grey blocks reflect the ball and cut its whole speed by 28 percent, however you hit them. Every block contact is a heavy brake.

That makes walls the better cushion. A putt that bounces once off a side wall behaves almost like a straight putt with a little extra distance, so it needs only a slightly longer pull. A putt that touches a block loses more than a quarter of its speed and needs more power to compensate, which makes its distance harder to judge. When a block corner is near your line, give it plenty of room, because clipping a corner sends the ball off at an angle that is hard to predict.

Managing four strokes

Think of each hole in terms of how many strokes you can afford. With four strokes left, you can try a slightly ambitious first putt, because a miss still leaves three tries. With one stroke left, the only goal is to drop the ball, so choose the most direct route even if it is long, and keep the power inside the window rather than trying to save a stroke elsewhere.

A steady target is three points per hole, meaning you sink the ball on the second putt. A deliberately soft first putt that stops short of the cup leaves the easiest possible second shot, and a run of three-point holes adds up faster than a few hole-in-ones mixed with an early finish.

One practical note for phones: if the screen size changes during a hole, for example when the address bar slides away or you rotate the device, the course is stretched to the new size and play carries on with the same hole. A big change such as rotating can squeeze the obstacles closer to the ball, so it is still easiest to finish a game in the orientation you started it.

Your best total is saved on this device, and any score above zero can be sent to the Hall of Fame from the game-over card. Soft hands, honest power and patience with the walls will take you further than any single great shot.