PGA Tour preview: time to hit some balls again

It’s been a long time since the release of EA Sports’ last golf offering – PGA Tour’s 2015 release starring Rory McIlroy on the cover marked the beginning of a break for the series. It’s finally time to jump into the golf cart and cruise to the green again, with PGA Tour returning in 2023.

The possibility of implementing new technologies was one of the main driving forces for the studio to revisit the series, it claims. As with most sports games, the aim is to make players feel like they’re standing on the green themselves, holding the club, swinging it with just enough force and precision, and hitting the ball just right. EA Sports says that innovations made since 2015 enable the developers to do exactly that.

Authenticity is the often-used keyword here, and EA Sports certainly wants to put a checkmark behind that point. The studio has recreated 30 real golf courses including Augusta National, St Andrews, and Bandon Dunes in painstaking detail by mapping them with drones and laser scans, even talking to the groundskeepers to get the texture of the grass just right.

Here’s a full list of golf courses included in PGA Tour:

• Augusta National
• St Andrews (Old Course)
• Pebble Beach
• The Country Club
• Southern Hills
• TPC Sawgrass
• Evian Resort
• East Lake
• Wilmington Country Club
• TPC Boston
• TPC Southwind
• Teeth of the Dog
• TPC Scottsdale
• Tara Iti
• Whistling Straits
• The Ocean Course at Kiawah
• Chambers Bay
• Wolf Creek
• Liberty National
• Bay Hill
• Riviera Country Club
• PGA West
• Quail Hollow
• Torrey Pines
• Banff Springs
• Top of the Rock
• Bandon Dunes
• Harbour Town

EA Sports wants to coordinate updates to the game with what’s happening in golf at the time, starting off with amateur competitions and a “Road to the Masters” event that coincides with the actual Masters in April. The game will then follow the professionals around the world, adding additional content.

Alongside the Masters, PGA Championship, US Open, and Open Championship, EA Sports has promised to deliver the Korn Ferry tour as well as the FedEx and Ryder cups. There will also be an emphasis on women’s golf, with LPGA tournaments being available at launch.

That emphasis, however, is not reflected in the roster of playable golfers yet: a mere five female professionals will be in the game at launch – Jin-Young Ko, Lexi Thompson, Danielle Kang, Jessica, and Nelly Korda, and that’s all of them. That said, it’s not like the list of featured male players is a whole lot longer than that. Scottie Scheffler, Tony Finau, Patrick Cantley, and Jordan Spieth have been revealed to star in the game, with more names supposedly being added before the game releases.

Some big names are unlikely to make it to the game due to moves from PGA to LIV Golf, Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, and Cameron Smith being among them.

While PGA Tour features grand optics and the possibility to run it in a 4K resolution, it’s capped at a mere 30fps. Still, it looks and plays smoothly enough.

Besides, gameplay is the main focus of the series’ return, offering a huge amount of options for customization. There’s a large number of clubs available in the game, each of them featuring 20 types of swings with different animations. Golf enthusiasts will certainly find this enjoyable. 

Thanks to various options for assists, PGA Tour is easily accessible to beginners as well, though. The club is controlled by the analog stick this time, with a more traditional three-click swing system to be added after the launch.

PGA Tour contains a single-player mode, local multiplayer, and online competitions with up to 16 players, in which commentary and replays are shortened to make the length of matches more feasible and reduce wait times. Career Mode includes a new progression system with RPG elements, a feature that’s basically become standard in modern sports games.

EA Sports wants to make the most realistic golf game on the market, and PGA Tour certainly has the toolkit to fulfil that ambition. It’s set to release on March 24, 2023, for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.

Written by Marco Wutz on behalf of GLHF.