WARNING: THIS GUIDE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR MARIO GOLF SUPER RUSH’S GOLF ADVENTURE MODE. IF YOU WANT TO AVOID SPOILERS, PLEASE CLOSE THIS GUIDE.

The Basics

Mario Golf Super Rush features custom playable characters in the form of Miis. You can make a Mii playable by making a Golf Adventure (Adventure, Adventure Mode) save file, and either choosing a Mii you’ve already made, or creating a new one. Miis are playable in all modes (Miis can be played in Battle Golf after beating Adventure Mode for the first time). While there is a limit of 3 Miis per Switch profile, any Mii with an Adventure save file can be played on any profile, and you can have more than 4 Miis on the same Switch by using multiple profiles.

Throughout Adventure Mode, your Mii will gain EXP, level up, and increase their stats. This guide focuses on ways to optimize your Mii’s stats, to create the best Mii possible.

How Miis' Stats Work in Mario Golf Super Rush

Basic Stat Breakdown

Every time a Mii levels up, they will gain a skill point that can be used to boost any of their stats. Miis, like all other characters in Mario Golf Super Rush, have 5 stats: Power, Stamina, Speed, Control, and Spin. Each stat controls the following factors of play:

Power: The length of the Mii’s drive. This can be boosted until the player reaches the level cap at Level 100.

Stamina: How long the Mii can run in Speed Golf, and how much of the stamina bar is consumed when using a Special dash. Your Mii’s stamina starts at 8 hearts, and has a cap of 15 hearts. Each skill point will increase your Mii’s stamina by half a heart.

Speed: How fast the Mii moves when walking, running, and using their Special dash in Speed Golf. Your Mii’s Speed varies on a scale from 1-10. This stat atrophies over time.

Control: How hard the Mii can hit the ball before it is affected by shift, and how much the ball will hook/slice at high power. Your Mii’s Control varies on a scale from 1-10. This stat atrophies over time.

Spin: How many times the Mii can twist the ball mid-flight, how sharply the Mii’s ball will curve when impact is applied, and how strongly top/backspin will affect the ball. Your Mii’s Spin varies on a scale from 1-10. This stat atrophies over time.

Deciding how many skill points go into each stat is the key to optimizing your Mii.

Stat Atrophy

In medicine, atrophy refers to the gradual decay of muscles and organs, usually due to underuse. In Mario Golf Super Rush, atrophy refers to stats that fall in value when your Mii reaches certain levels. Unlike muscular atrophy, it is impossible to prevent atrophy in your Mii’s stats. Even if you boost a stat as soon as it begins to fall, the stat will increase by 1 point instead of the normal 2, so the atrophy still takes effect. If you try to be clever and wait for a stat to fall to 0 before investing in it, that stat will fall into the negatives behind the scenes, and it will take multiple skill points to see a tangible upgrade. This means it will take more than 10 skill points to keep your Mii’s Speed, Control, and Spin stats at 10/10 when they reach Level 100.

Fortunately, the atrophy of each stat is consistent, so it is possible to ensure your Mii’s Speed, Control, and Spin end up at the desired value. To handle stat atrophy efficiently, boost the decaying stat when it is between 1 and 8. If you wait too long and let a stat atrophy into the negatives, you won’t be able to tell when it is decaying anymore, which can throw a wrench into your plans. If you boost the decaying stat when it is falling from 10/10 to 9/10, it will just stay where it is. It is unconfirmed whether or not this wastes the potential gain from that skill point, so for the sake of caution, I recommend waiting until the stat falls to 8/10 before investing skill points into it again.

Stat Distribution Table

How to Optimize Your Mii

The actual process of optimizing your Mii is fairly straight-forward, but very precarious. Begin Adventure Mode with a plan for where you want your non-power stats to be, and exactly how many skill points are required to get there. The game autosaves immediately after you level up, and you cannot re-spec your Mii’s stats after they are locked in. Be extremely careful with how and where you place your skill points, because making a mistake could mean you have to restart your Adventure save file. Once you know how you will allocate your skill points, you then have to grind your Mii all the way up to Level 100; the game’s level cap.

The very first thing you must decide when creating a Mii is whether you plan to optimize the Mii for Stroke Play or Speed Golf. Even if you plan to use Miis in both modes, you should make a separate Mii for each rather than try to optimize a Mii for both. Jack of both trades and master of none is, in Super Rush, worse than master of one.

Next, you must decide how much Spin you want. Regardless of game mode, Spin is a very volatile stat. The impact point has a major effect on the ball’s trajectory by default, and higher Spin means that effect gets stronger. You may decide that max Spin is too sensitive for your tastes. If that is the case, you must decide how far you want your Spin stat to go. Do you want to be able to twist the ball once, twice, three times, or four times? If you want to be able to twist the ball once or four times, do you want to have more Spin than the bare minimum, or not?

I wanted my Mii to have a spin stat of 4, exactly enough to twist the ball twice.

Optimizing for Stroke Play

If you’re optimizing your Mii for Stroke Play, you can ignore the Stamina and Speed stats entirely. They do not impact Stroke Play in any manner, and it is very much possible to complete Adventure Mode without investing a single point into either stat. This is great because it frees up more room for Power without sacrificing your other useful stats. If you max out both Control and Spin, you will have a respectable 68 skill points left for Power, giving you a drive of 319 yards.

For Stroke Play, I recommend maxing out Control. You should then invest the minimum amount of points in Spin to get your desired number of twists (as shown in the table above), and put all remaining skill points into Power.

Unfortunately, if you already put skill points in Stamina or Speed (either by accident or because you thought it was required to beat Adventure Mode), there is no way to take them off. You will either have to delete your Adventure save file and start over, or make this Mii your Speed Golf Mii and start a new save file for Stroke Play.

Optimizing for Speed Golf

When optimizing for Speed Golf, you must decide on a priority list for skill points. While it is possible to max out every single non-power stat, doing so comes at a severe cost to power.

This is weaker than many Superstar Characters.

If you want your Mii to have competitive Power, you are going to have to compromise on one or more stats. You may not need to max out your Stamina bar. You might not need to hit top speeds. Maybe you’re willing to deal with less Control over your shots. Perhaps you want less Spin. Whichever stat(s) you are willing to make concessions on, decide how much you want to concede for higher power. The “optimal” stat priority list is highly subjective, and you should take this with a grain of salt, but here is my personal stat priority list (not including Power):

1. Speed: Obviously, if you want a Mii that’s good at Speed Golf, they will have to be fast. You should not sacrifice your Mii’s Speed stat unless absolutely necessary, and if it is necessary, you should only sacrifice one skill point.

2. Control: A middle of the road stat. Control has never been essential in Mario Golf, but Super Rush’s lack of manual shots means it is much harder to avoid the effects of bad Control. This makes Control more important than in previous games by a significant margin. You can sacrifice some points from Control without too much issue, but try to keep it above 5/10.

3. Spin: As mentioned earlier, you may not even want 10/10 Spin in the first place, so keeping it below that value may not be a sacrifice to you. If you want max Spin but need more power than you can get with it, you can always dock a skill point from Spin to maintain a 4-twist shot.

4. Stamina: Stamina does not atrophy, and the amount your Mii starts with is fairly generous. I wouldn’t recommend investing more than a few skill points into Stamina, if any.

Level Grinding

When I beat my first run of Golf Adventure, I completed every optional lesson as soon as it became available. Upon defeating the Snow King, I reached level 67. The level cap is 100. You cannot gain EXP when using Miis outside of Adventure Mode, so grinding in Adventure mode is absolutely, no way around it required to optimize your Mii.

There is one grinding spot in the game that blows all others out of the water. After getting a Lob Wedge from Master Lob, the plot requires you to visit Master Duff in Balmy Dunes. Master Duff offers to teach you The Way of the Duff, then asks you to take a simple test: lobbing the ball into 3 pots stacked on top of rocks. If you pass this test, you will be taught The Way of the Duff, and you will never get another minigame from Master Duff again. If you fail the simple test, you will get roughly half a level’s worth of EXP, and can retake the test as many times as you want. Failing the pot test takes less than a minute with optimal button mashing, so you can rack up levels extremely quickly by repeatedly failing the pot test. If at all possible, use this spot to grind to level 100 as soon as you can.

Unfortunately, this grinding spot can be missed if you have already learned The Way of the Duff, so you’ll need a backup plan. If you want to grind while idle, you can refight the Snow King as many times as you want. Stand next to the snowmen and let them kill you for a somewhat slow but effortless grind.

For a quicker grind, play the first 8 holes in Bowser Highlands normally, then forfeit hole 9. You can restart Hole 9 infinitely for a quick mashing grind similar to the pot test (albeit less efficient).

If you don’t mind actually playing the game, you can replay the 6 holes on the Rookie Course. The Rookie course is very short, so you can crank out 6 holes quickly, and the Rookie Course grants a good amount of EXP for how easy it is.