The Golf Club 2019

HB Studios, now partnered with 2K Sports, is here to give us the third version of their very popular golf simulator. The Golf Club 2019 - featuring PGA Tour - gives us the chance to hit slices and hooks like never before, and after some delays, the focus is now back on the golfing action.

It's only been a year since the last time we got the last version of The Golf Club, but in that period the developers have done a lot of work with the game. With a fresh PGA license, they also have six official TPC courses available, with the possibility of more to come.

Unfortunately, there aren't any licensed PGA or LPGA players in this version of the game though. HB Studios has focused on the six TPC courses and the career mode to begin with, and kept the possibility to change the characters in-game for us all to make them ourselves. This solution would be better if they allowed us to share created player lists among users however, and there are a lot of names to edit, and there is always someone willing to do it.

The new career mode offers a lot of new ways to play The Golf Club alone. Where the earlier games focused mostly on multiplayer, this version gives us more options for playing offline. Starting off with the Q-School finals at TPC Scottsdale in Arizona, we try to qualify for the web.com tour and then go on towards the PGA Tour. For those of us who have played The Golf Club a lot earlier this wasn't a big issue even in hard mode, but there are several ways for a fresh golfer to ease into the game. With both lessons to learn how everything works (this is new in the game) and also five different difficulties, there really should be no problem for anyone to find their fit and enjoy this game.

There are also a lot of adjustments to be made to your golfer. With even more equipment available for clothing and appearance, it's easy for us to make our character unique and look like ourselves... unless you're on the heavy side of the scale. We're not sure why HB Studios decided to make all of the golfers somewhat fit, but it does make us feel a bit better going around the links all muscular instead of chubby after setting the correct height and weight into our profile.

Sponsorships are also new to this version, as throughout the career mode we're rewarded with new sponsor deal with set goals. There are a total of five different sponsors which has four levels of sponsorship, and we have to meet certain goals like winning a major, score an eagle, or hit all greens in regulations in a round to unlock sponsor apparel like hats, shoes, and clothing. This is a great way to keep the career mode even more alive instead of just having to win the tournaments.

One of the big issues with the previous versions of The Golf Club has been the difficulty hitting from the rough. It would feel almost hopeless to get out of what seemed to be pretty decent positions, and we were a lot more punished than we thought we deserved. In The Golf Club 2019 though HB Studios has adjusted this massively, and maybe a little too much. Even if the ball is in the deep rough we are now able to hit it out without much trouble.

Another issue we experienced early on is that the ball doesn't really stop on the green with firm and fast greens. Even a well lofted shot with a lob wedge will run off a bit after hitting the ground, and where you would be able to get some stop or even backspin to the ball in real life, the ball keeps going for another five or six yards, making the approach shots way more difficult. Even on the softer greens we would experience this issue at times, but at least there was less roll on these greens. Both of these issues will probably be adjusted in future updates of the game.

The swing mechanics and ball behaviour are pretty much the same as previous versions, but there are also some slight adjustments. Together with the ball coming out of the rough easier, it is now more difficult to hit shots where the ball is under or over your feet in the stance. Having the ball below your feet as you hit the shot will cause the ball to slice more than it did before, and this is a great adjustment in our eyes.

The Golf Club 2019 looks and sounds brilliant too. We tested the game on both the PlayStation 4 Pro and the Xbox One X and were stunned several times by the graphics and sounds in this game. A slightly better performance on the Xbox One X is to be expected, but the difference isn't not that big. The sounds from hitting the ball, hearing the wildlife, or landing in the water (which happens more often than we'd like of course) are very precise, and we really feel like we're on a golf course while hitting balls left and right.

Unfortunately, there are some setbacks to the graphics with regards to the spectators. It's great that we experience larger crowds for bigger tournaments, but they're still very static and don't react at all to where the ball is. The ball goes through the spectators too, and it just doesn't look right. The crowd has no real visual reaction to where the ball is ending up, but they do cheer for a good shot, which is a plus. We would like for more animations where at least they follow the ball, and while hitting the green on hole 16 of TPC Scottsdale is somewhat celebrated with the crowd standing up in the stands, this could also be done better with them being more lively.

Course creation is a big part of golf simulators from HB Studios, and this version is no exception. There will be thousands of user-made courses on top of the official ones, and with the small improvements done to the course designer this year, we would have to assume this number will only increase. They have made it easier to create a simple course with various tools, but also made it more advanced for the professional creators with more options like splines to easily set the design of your fairways, roughs, greens, and tees. The course designer is still easy to use with the controller, and most creators we've talked to prefer using a controller over mouse and keyboard, even when they're on a computer.

The Golf Club 2019 featuring PGA Tour is a must-buy for every golf fan. With some small adjustments to what we have mentioned in this review, this will be the perfect golf simulator. We're not ready to give it the top grade just yet, but HB Studios, together with 2K Sports, are getting close. Very close.