Review by: Shawn Quigley
Published: July 15, 1997

As golf becomes more popular today than it has in recent years, EA Sports has released their next golf simulation, PGA Tour Pro. For the first time, players have the opportunity to pick and choose between some higher quality golf simulations than they have in the past. By combining new technologies, such as Internet play and faster graphics, golfing simulations keep getting better.

PGA Tour Pro is EA Sports’ next entry into the popular golf simulation market. “When we set out to do the next installment in the PGA TOUR series, we looked at three key ingredients. Those ingredients were looks, speed, and the ability to play over the Internet. Our ultimate goal is to provide a real-time experience. To do that you need all three of these things,” Cartwright explains. Having tried out an early version of PGA Tour Pro, I have to say that they have met these goals. PGA Tour Pro is a Windows 95 game that runs at color resolutions up to 32,000 colors. By keeping the number of colors to 32,000, EA Sports has been able to achieve near instantaneous redraw times. After taking a shot, the next location literally pops up. This is something that you have to see to believe. Cartwright explains, “From the onset of development, we felt that we could achieve a no wait time in drawing the screens, thus allowing you to experience faster gameplay and, with that, allowing us to beat out our competition.” Having played other games like Links LS where it takes some time to redraw the screen (especially on lower end systems), this was definitely a much needed surprise for golf simulations.

Playing a round of golf is much like any other golf game out there. The whole idea is to aim the shot properly and click your mouse at the right times. PGA Tour Pro uses a “Target Arc System” to help you aim your shots. What this basically does is give you a visualization of the flight trajectory of the ball if you were to hit a perfect shot. To produce fades and draws you simply hold down the right mouse button and “bend” the arc in that direction. After having aimed the shot, you either can use the three or two click methods for hitting your shot. In a two click method, you click and hold the mouse down until you reach your desired strength, then you let it go. On its way down, you click it at the right time to make it line up straight down. A three click method works much the same except the first click starts the meter around, the second stops it and sends it back the other way and the third is to stop it. Along with the option to choose how to hit the ball, there is now a “risk meter.” This meter will give you the value of risk with taking that shot. To come up with this risk factor, the game takes into consideration a number of factors like your lie, the slope of your lie, distance and the type of shot you are hitting. This allows you to get a better feel of what type of shot you are considering taking.

One of the most impressive features to date in golf simulations is the picture-in-picture view. Being able to place a real-time ball-cam in a window is brilliant. The effect is really cool to watch. Other games have attempted this on other platforms, but nobody has ever been able to pull it off like PGA Tour Pro. You have the ability to set the view of this window from an options screen. There are a number of different views such as blimp-cam, gallery, tower-cam, ball-cam and first person. Along with these views is a floating representation of the hole on the right hand side of the screen that shows your shot in real time. This is another one of those features that definitely stands out.

There are many other new features in this version that add to the overall realism of the game. While you are around the green, you will see the flag blowing in the wind and, when you are on the green, your caddie will tend the flag for you on long putts. When it comes time to putt, there is a new feature called the “Putting Surface Analyzer.” Although this feature was not ready in the version I played, it will allow you to walk around the green in real time to analyze your shot. The game will come with three courses out of the box including the TPC Scottsdale, Arnold Palmer’s home course, Bay Hill, and Pebble Beach.

PGA Tour Pro is the first golf simulation to offer true online golfing tournament with its EA Sports NET. This feature allows players to log into EA Sports NET via an Internet connection and join tournaments, chat with other players, or even create your own tournament. There is the ability to play along with up to three other players at a time. Tournaments can have up to 80 players in them and they play just like any other tournament. Along with the ability to enter into those tournaments created by other players, EA Sports will be modeling a PGA season that you can play in throughout the year. This whole concept is one of the many features that really lets PGA TOUR stand out. Not only do you have a combination of great looking graphics, lightning fast redraws, and real PGA players, but you also have the ability to take your game on the road and prove your game online versus live players from around the world. To get online all you have to do is dial into your Internet service provider and click on the Net option within PGA Tour Pro.

With a slew of new features, PGA Tour Pro is one of those highly anticipated golf games of the summer months. With every new version of EA Sports, golf fanatics are given the ability to take one step closer to the real thing.