It’s the last hole and I’m at six below par for the tournament. Big Boy Billy shot his last hole and now it’s up to me to finish. The pressure is on. If I could just make this 18 foot putt …
HB Studios and 2K are back after a two-year break, transforming The Golf Club into the full-fledged and licensed PGA Tour game with all the bells and whistles you would expect. Right away you are thrown into the character maker to create your legend with quite a few options at hand – in fact hundreds. Of course, I made a version of myself, complete with manebun, before diving into the wide range of licensed clothing. I finally opted for a shirt / tie / coat combo with a pork pie hat, which absolutely fed me. If you want your clothing from the brand of Addidas or Polo Ralph Lauren, they are of course there with some options locked until you unlock them through gameplay.
Then look at your Golfbag and the 14 clubs you take with you during your games. You can unlock and buy new clubs with varying stats for different situations, though I’m still a reason to change my maximum driver where I started with. Your clubs can also be adjusted with different axes and handles if you really want to extend.
All of this character creation was immediately followed by a short and fairly robust training session to teach you the basics of swinging that stick to get the maximum distance on your shots.
Pulling back on the right stick will bring your club back and then push forward as it reaches the force you want in the gauge your golfer will see the ball. I thought this would be easy, but there’s an art to it. You have to be right. An image of the ball with a white line in the middle shows you how precise your stroke is with a blue line, and mine was all over the place. I did not know how inaccurate I was!
The problem I had was every time I pushed the stick forward I always went up and to the right, so of course my balls flew to the right. It took some time and patience before I started ignoring the basics. But this would be a sports sim and that level of learning should be expected.
I then jumped right into a career and that’s where the salt started. I thought after one training session that I was ready to go. I chose the easiest option which was Q-School and brought my first 18 holes embarrassed for the other up and down the battle. I finished at 11 par par and failed my first season. I then missed my second.
Back to training.
Another round of really reading the mechanics and hard practice saw me finish in the top 50 during my third run, allowing me to qualify to play under the big wigs. I was actually improving. That’s one of 2K21’s most important selling points for me, truly trackable self-improvement. Suddenly I hit birds, read the wind correctly, judging the blank lines on my well. It’s all mechanical and it’s all very well desgined.
The true shot mechanic is fantastic. The game does a very good job of catering for beginners by making sure you recommend a club and shot style to use for each shot (which can be disabled), but if you want to take a risk and take that ball a little further press, then the true shot will give you a little experiment. It’s as simple as hitting the ball in a certain spot to either raise or lower the air, allowing you to cut through strong winds, or adjusting this attacking angle to get a few extra yards.
Before long, you’ll be promoted to the PGA Tour, and that’s when career mode begins to open. You unlock sponsorship goals, which level your relationship with them, and unlock rewards like new clubs and clothing. The goals are also pretty simple, like hitting six birds at your next tournament or hitting as many greens in regulation. You can have only one sponsor active at a time, but there are enough goals to complete.
The point of all this is the purpose of the FedExCup. Completing events during the tournament will earn you FedExCup points based on how well you do. Along the way, you can actually compete with some of the biggest names in golf like Bryson DeChambeau and Jim Furyk.
If you unlock the first rival, Cameron Champ, the next time you meet him in a tournament, you must score five rival points to complete the rivalry and unlock the set reward. I did this through one tournament on my first trip, scoring points for defeating him in areas like the total score on the first nine holes, how many Birdies I shot and whether I went a full round or not without Bogies. It’s a nice feature, but I really tried to do nothing out of the ordinary but play my best game. Once done, you simply unlock the next rivalry in the queue. This feature generally feels a bit undercooked. I would prefer that over the course of a year I have a good rivalry with another golfer, tell a story of how we went all year from then to now. Instead it is like you have one good game and suddenly you are declared the winner. I doubt Cameron is captivated by that, to be honest.
The main problem is that the career just feels a little empty and lacks a little soul. There is no player progression beyond your own improving skills, the rivalries feel low, and you never feel like building something. You just play events to get a trophy in the closet. Even the comment does not help, and although Luke Elvy and Rich Beem will sound quite authentic to American golf fans, the genes consistently made comments out of place, praising me for bad shots and sighs when I scored a Birdie.
Maybe you can inject some more life by playing with other people. There is a bunch of different game types and online multiplayer. While we were unable to test this before launch, the game also includes Sociations, where you can set up a golf club with your friends and compete together in a relaxed environment. You can create people admins and set up their weekly events as you wish.
What we got to play with was the detailed course design, which is easily one of the better features in PGA Tour 2K21 and builds on the ones found in previous Golf Club games. You start by choosing the number of holes and how many par 3’s or 5 ‘you want to record before choosing an environment to set it. I went for the desert, because why not? The freedom you have in this mode is pretty wild. From simple things like weather and time of day, to ploping of giant village houses and crocodiles on the course. With enough time you could set up some really fun and enjoyable courses. Then you have the added bonus of being able to upload and share with the community, which is always great to see.
