Gaming in the 2020s can sometimes feel like work, and if you’re an anxious type, somewhat fraught. Games are stuffed with options nowadays. Think of the mass of dialogue choices, many of which don’t really have much impact apart from very surface level consequences. And every time, I’m like, “which one do I choose?”

This nicer comment feels more of myself, but this more aggressive and cutting choice could make things more interesting. Open worlds, by their nature and design, constantly demand the player to prioritise. Do I focus on the story missions? This side quest seems intriguing – but how far do I need to travel for it? Wait, maybe I should concentrate on upgrading my gear first.

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A golf game cuts down on all this and can therefore make for a very pleasant evening. Look, there’s the ball, that small white glimmer, with those oddly comforting indentations, calling out for me to whack it yonder. Here is the fairway, stretching out, just asking to be ruined by competitive ambition. And, of course, the simplicity of the club. Yes, there are options here, but usually the game (or the caddy) will suggest the best number and type. The objective is simple and easy to parse. The ball and the hole. The hole and the ball. Send the ball home. And it’s not all in the hips, gamer, it’s all in the fingers.

An image from PGA Tour 2K23 showing a golf course

I remember the very first golf game I played. It was a free trial that came with Windows 98. My mum and I got our first PC in the late ‘90s and my main experience of it was playing the free games that came with it. There was one that involved marbles and matching colours, and the golf game. A friend and I would spend our afternoons playing this game, taking it in turns, ignoring the PlayStation that was downstairs. It was a freer time, unbothered by mass Internet usage, social media, and smartphones. We even played outside.

That golf game went for mouse clicks. Use the mouse to decide the path of the ball. Click once to let the power bar go up on the broken circle, click again to place the power in the optimum area. All golf games are variations on such a theme, but in 2023 I experienced the novelty and nostalgia of once again playing a golf title. I’d played the amusing What The Golf? on Apple Arcade, and that was a nice distraction, but getting PGA Tour 2K23 on the PS5 was an altogether different experience.

Tiger Woods follows through after a big swing of his golf club.

After work, I’d boot up PGA Tour 2K23, and hit the fairway with my amateur player trying to make him pro. It was fun creating my character but soon I itched for the Zen-like focus of sending the ball into the air, its journey described by elegant arcs, or along the green, my imagination always picturing its smooth progress along the neatly cut lawn, even as the game showed it to me polygonally. With a golf game, I don’t know why, but I can always so easily imagine its realness. Perhaps it’s the simple ingredients of the visuals. Sky blue and lovely clouds. Differing shades of green. The bark textures of trees. The slightest whisper of breezes. The pastels of golf clothes. All comfortingly visualised and presented, like Saturday morning TV.

PGA Tour 2K23 opts for a more involved control scheme than what I was used to with the PC title I’d played all them years ago. It chooses to simulate the swing or putt of the club via the dual sticks, and you have to ensure the accurate and controlled path of the analog stick to move the ball well. This requires manual dexterity of a more disciplined manner than those more used to the quickfire reflexes of something like Call of Duty, and it took a little getting used to. But with a golf game, you can get a gentler and slower sense of flow that can be quite relaxing and unwinding.

It is absorbing, entrancing, and persuasive, as if golf is all that matters, and the ball’s destiny the only focal point. There are some intrusions and distractions. I can make money and modify my golfer’s outfit. Sure, it’s 2023, and this can add some necessary variety to the experience. But on that fairway, the objective is as simple as it always was. I hear the strike of my swing and watch the camera fly. In that moment, nothing else really matters, and suddenly it’s Windows 98 and the click of a mouse between two friends on a lazy afternoon, our attention fully absorbed by it all.

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