PGA Tour Golf

In the nineties, I played golf exactly as many times as I had to — which is to say, never. But PGA Tour Golf by Sterling Silver Software from 1990 got me to spend hours hunched over my monitor, calculating how many degrees to adjust my aim for the crosswind. That's precisely the magic this game delivers: it strips away the physical awkwardness of the entire discipline and leaves you with pure strategy.

It's a golf simulation for MS-DOS based on the PGA Tour license — the prestigious American circuit of that era. You play real courses, pick your difficulty, and step up to the tee. The goal is simple: shoot the lowest score possible. But a simple goal doesn't mean simple decision-making.

The three-click swing mechanic — stop for power, then precision — was the standard of the day, and the genre fell in love with it and refused to let go. It sounds trivial, but on harder settings with shifting winds and choosing the right club from fourteen in your bag, every hole becomes a little tactical puzzle. You read the terrain map, estimate the trajectory, adjust your angle. When the ball lands exactly where you planned, there's satisfaction without physical exertion — and that's exactly the point. The graphics are decent for the era, modest by today's standards, but perfectly readable. Sound Blaster doesn't sound any worse here than on other sports games of the time — just turn it down.

PGA Tour Golf has aged exactly as you'd expect. After thirty-five years, the controls still work, but the interface demands patience. There's no tutorial or beginner tips — the game assumes you know what a birdie is, and if you don't, you're hunting for the manual. Which, of course, you don't have at home. The big weakness is the complete lack of any meaningful campaign structure — you play rounds, watch your score, play more rounds. Normal for 1990, but you'll feel it after twenty minutes today.

Today, you'll play it if you want to see where PC golf started before Links arrived, and then EA Sports with their whole industry. It's a pure, straightforward simulation with no frills — and you can fire it up in your browser via DOSBox without much fuss. If you have even a passing interest in golf, or if you've never understood what people see in it and want to find out without paying greenfee, this is still a solid answer.