David Leadbetter's Greens

Golf as a computer game is just as boring as golf itself. Or is it? David Leadbetter's Greens at least won't bore you with pleasantries — it's straightforward, fast, and won't hesitate to tell you that you've messed up.

This is a golf simulation from 1991, named after the famous golf instructor. You're not playing with a club in your hand and fifty thousand spectators watching, but comfortably against the computer on various courses. The goal is clear: post the lowest score, meaning fewer strokes on the green. Each hole — that's your battle.

The mechanics are simple: pick your club, set the power of your swing and direction. The graphics are spartan, pure DOS-era in its purest form — green surface, player as a tiny figure, numbers everywhere. But the game works with the physics you'd expect: wind, terrain, grass type — it all matters. It's not arcade fun, more like a calculation exercise with golf. Pros will find it challenging, casual players will find it frustrating — there's no margin for error here.

In the nineties, this was a small miracle — golf on a computer taken seriously. To today's player, it looks like a paper simulator where you calculate yourself whether you hit or not. The graphics are so minimalist that sometimes you wonder if you're even seeing it right. But — and this matters — the game works. There's no unnecessary bloat in it.

Today you'll play it in your browser out of curiosity, not passion. If you're curious what sports simulations looked like on DOS without 3D, without animations, without a geyser of data — here's your answer. There are moments when you realize that older design has its logic. But after twenty minutes, you'll go back to something more colorful.