It’s spring here in Wisconsin, the birds are singing, the grass is turning green and the annual migration of the golf warrior is underway.

The warrior often hibernates dreaming of warm sunny days, walking down the endless green carpets of their favorite course, and hitting that perfect shot.  In the spring, the warrior emerges from hibernation and stretches his wings.  He arms himself with steel and titanium weapons like some sordid creature from beneath the earth.  Once this creature has mastered his weapon, he approaches the course to chase the elusive prey, a small white orb that seems to be imbued with magical properties that make it defy the very laws of gravity. 

The orb, having settled onto its perch, is approached with caution, patience, and confidence.  If the warrior wavers, the orb will fly away wildly in often unpredictable paths and will hide.  It will hide in places of great silence, the deep grass, the nearest body of water or nestled in the soft bosom of the nearest tree.  When this happens, the warrior often speaks the forbidden words, “$&$#^%&* orb; why does thou challenge me!”  He then worries about having a stroke and from his magical bag he removes another orb only to repeat the challenge once again.

OK, enough about medieval golf, let’s look at some real golf: golf played via a video game.  Golf videogames have the advantage of being weather-indifferent: you can play them any time.  There are also no tee times in video golf, and you don’t have to worry if you are golfing so slow that the group behind you will hit you with a ball.

 My first introduction to the "sport" was a title for the Atari 2600 simply called Golf.  This was golf at its most basic: hold down the fire button to set the power of the swing.  The longer you held the button the harder the ball would be hit. This made for some really fun putting challenges.  There you were, on the green, three yards from the hole.  You take out your driver, and just smack the ball as far as it would go!

Once personal computers arrived, better golf games were not far behind.  Launched in 1986, World Tour Golf was one of the first golf games for the personal computer crowd designed to run on platforms like the PC, Apple IIGS, the Amiga and Commodore 64.  World Tour Golf was an evolutionary step in the golfing genre in that it allowed you to pick your club and you could actually hook and slice the ball if you wanted to.  They also included a course editor allowing you to create your own courses.   World Tour Golf had the distinction of using actual golf courses as a template for some of the holes in the game.  The game also offered whimsical holes, including an all island hole and holes with 270 degree dog legs. 

For me, the granddaddy golf game of all time is Golden Tee.  For a time, the game seemed to be in every tavern that had a power plug.  This arcade game became so popular that there were tournaments setup across the nation and eventually around the globe.

When we first started playing Golden Tee it was a regular night at the corner pub, and we were bored.  There were some guys playing at the pool table and they had quarters stacked up so that they would "own" the table for the night.  We saw a videogame, sitting quietly in the corner; the soft golden glow of the lights seem to attract us like moths to a flame.  We put our quarters in and tried to figure out how to play golf on this strange arcade game.  We kept feeding the arcade game quarters and before we knew it, we were actually sinking puts on the greens.

This went on for what seemed like only minutes, but before we knew it, it was closing time.  We had spent six hours playing that golf game.  Our wrists were sore and we felt like we had just walked the back nine at Augusta.  If you take your golf game seriously, hitting the course every week, or even if only twice a year on your gaming console, remember to keep your eye on the ball.

Did you enjoy this article? Please bookmark it onto: