The Golf Club represented a rarity in sports games. An indie game with no license, it was successful enough to set up a sequel that caught the attention of the PGA and 2K Games, both of whom teamed up with creator HB Studios to bestow a license on the third game in the series. The series then moved to a bi-yearly release schedule and a name change to PGA Tour 2K21. With PGA Tour 2K23, the series formerly known as The Golf Club reached a new milestone by having Tiger Woods come aboard, removing any chance of EA using the golf celebrity for quite some time.

From the beginning, the series was built on a few key things that continue in this iteration. The first is the control scheme, which you'll be familiar with if you've played either the older games from this series or the old Tiger Woods series from the PS2 era onward. Using either analog stick on a controller or your mouse, you have granular control over your strength and direction for each swing; you need to pull back until you hit the marker for the strength of your shot and then push up to unleash the swing. While putting makes you use a straight line to gauge your shot, swinging anywhere else places the meter on the side of your golfer in a curved pattern, making it look more realistic as you get a better gauge of how powerful your swing is. It means that you'll need to put in a good amount of practice, but it affords you a great deal of control.

As good as the scheme is, analog stick or mouse control might not be for everyone, so the series has an alternate control scheme in the form of a three-click system. While this may conjure up memories of most titles like the original Golf on the NES, you'll find that the system is quite different in practice. You start by holding down a button to increase a circle until the edges reach the appropriate amount of strength you want to administer. Next, you'll watch as a needle turns counterclockwise, making you hit twice in the designated yellow areas to determine swing straightness and accuracy. It's simple on paper but gets difficult if you're playing in the higher difficulty levels unless you really practice. Most people will likely stick with the analog swing system, but the alternate method is welcome for those who can't do steady stick movements.

Realistic golf physics is the next pillar of the series, and the game follows through with that quite faithfully. There's never a moment when perfect shots lead to balls going wild or bounces on the turf going unexplained. The only complaint is the fact that the HUD is minimal enough that it takes a few button presses to find some important info, like wind direction and speed. Like the control scheme, the game compensates for newcomers by giving you a wide berth so shots that aren't straight still have a good chance of landing in a good area. It gets to the point where you'll really need to widely swing your shot to the left or right to go off course — at least in the lower difficulties.

Finally, there's customization. Player customization doesn't quite reach the levels of the old Tiger Woods series as far as variety and focus on minutiae, but it gets close enough that you can create anyone you want with surprisingly good detail. The only catch is that you can't share these golfing creations online. The opposite is true of the course creator, which lets you share every creation with the world and imports all of your PGA Tour 2K21 courses with ease. The system remains deep if you want to start from scratch, and the bevy of backdrops, props and tools let you re-create official PGA Tour courses (to a degree), which are missing due to the lack of licensing.

All of these are combined in modes that may not be numerous but will keep you occupied for a while. Casual mode is exactly what it sounds like, as you and up to three others take on any course with any parameters you want to work with. You can go with your created character, or you can use any pro golfer you want. The roster is expanded with male golfers like Tiger Woods and Rickie Fowler as well as female ones like Lexi Thompson and Lydia Ko. There are even a few celebrities, like Steph Curry and Michael Jordan, but the latter is only available if you pick up DLC or the more premium versions of the game. It's a nice touch to have them here, but their presence comes at a time when the roster of available golfers has been cut down due to the presence of the competing LIV Golf League, so former PGA golfers have moved there instead.

Online play is also available for Casual mode, and the performance works quite well; it's almost expected since no golf games have ever suffered from terrible lag. All of the other online game modes from 2K21 make a comeback, but the big draw for serious online players is Societies, which are essentially clubs you can form online for competitions and personal tournaments. For those who love playing with very custom rule sets, it is awesome to see this. During launch week, I saw plenty of rooms pop up alongside 2K's official one.

MyCareer is where the heart of the game is, and it's where players will spend most of their time when not competing with others. It starts with the character creation system, where you can assign a type to your golfer, whether there's a focus on putting, driving down the fairway, or being an all-around golf pro. From there, you can start in Q-School, Korn Ferry Tour and Championship, or go straight to the PGA Tour if you want to skip the minor leagues and aim for the FedEx cup.

One of the more intriguing things about the mode is that it finally gives you more than one avenue to level up. Gameplay in every mode gets you XP, which can be spent on attributes related to your behavior with each club type. That unlocks a few perks that make a difference in your play style. Conversely, the game abandons the use of new clubs as a means of improving stats in favor of fittings, which accomplish the same thing and allow you to choose the clubs that look best to you. Equipping the fittings costs in-game currency, but the title is surprisingly generous. The fittings only need to be purchased one time, but you can use them on every club in your arsenal. As a result, you get some real freedom to experiment with a bunch of different fittings before you have to worry about saving up and playing tournaments.

What may surprise people here is how restrained MyCareer is, especially in comparison to the other sports games in 2K's lineup. You have sponsor contracts that you can accept or decline, but that's about all of the interaction you'll get. You can easily bounce around from contract to contract to unlock everything in the pathway, without really hurting anyone so long as you keep playing well. There are no interviews you need to conduct or social media you need to manage, and there isn't a visual novel-like dialogue tree with anyone you meet. You do have a rival, who can be another created golfer or one of the pros in the game, but the most you'll do is see their plays in your tournament and have them highlighted when playing against them. The focus is squarely on gameplay on the green, and depending on how you feel about the career modes in other sports games, the simplicity can be refreshing or a missed opportunity to do more.

Finally, there's Topgolf, which can be played locally or online. The mode takes place in the company's Las Vegas facility, and your goal is to hit balls into targets for points. More points are awarded if you can make it closer to the center of the large targets, and double points are given if you are able to hit the targets that glow for that swing. Compared to the actual courses, this mode is much tougher since you're focused on accuracy versus swinging as hard as you can. The different control methods don't have specific hotspots that you can aim for. Still, it is a nice change of pace from the regular game and it's something fun if you can't make it out to the actual locations.

For those who are familiar with the way 2K Sports does things, PGA Tour 2K23 sits somewhere in the middle between NBA 2K23 and WWE 2K23 as far as "cost beyond the initial purchase" goes. You can't exactly buy your way through the career mode or make yourself uber-powerful via money, since many of the things you'll buy are cosmetic. You can buy in-game currency, but the costs of equipping fittings are minimal enough that it seems futile. You can buy a bunch of items, but everything is cosmetic, so it gets away from the trappings of the company's NBA game.

At the same time, there is a season pass full of cosmetics, and while there is a free tier, most of the items are only earned via the premium level. You will be tempted to buy a pass with a boost to earn all of that stuff faster. For a game you've already paid for, this isn't ideal, but it also could've been worse.

There is one actual consumable at your disposal, and that's the name-brand golf balls that come with stats of their own, but their limited time use means having to constantly buy them whenever you use them. At the same time, while the stats on paper make it seem like it'll give you an edge on the green, the drawbacks associated with each ball don't make them magic bullets. Most players can easily resist the temptation and stick with the other, more substantial fittings instead.

The audio is interesting because of how scattershot it can be. The soundtrack is the perfect example, as the portions between each hole sound like pieces of an epic golf movie. The menu music goes between something classical to something resembling restrained dubstep. It's all over the place in tone, but it remains charming. The voice work is mostly good, as the commentators go from being very casual and nonchalant in casual play to being very serious in MyCareer. The only consistency is the lack of a pop filter for everyone and the fact that a good chunk of the calls come in fairly late compared to the play.

Graphically, PGA Tour 2K23 still looks nice. The character models for your created golfer and the pros look quite good, while the crowd looks good until you notice that they're always stuck facing in one direction. The environments have a decent amount of detail, but this isn't exactly a next-generation facelift. Animations are good until you also notice that you'll sometimes pantomime to the crowd but not face them either. The major complaint is that it takes a very fine eye to notice any difference, if any, from PGA Tour 2K21. That isn't a major knock against the game since that previous incarnation looked rather nice, but those expecting a major overhaul after two years won't be too impressed.

On the Steam Deck, the game defaults to a High texture preset, which makes it look awesome on the device's screen with a frame rate that hovers between 40-50fps. It also means that the experience is taxing; just being on the course drags down the battery to under two hours of playtime on a full charge. The game has some tools to help make things better, like a resolution upscaling slider. Dropping the preset to Medium also isn't too bad. Still, the game on the Deck upholds the sport's prior reputation of being surprisingly taxing on PCs as a whole.

In the end, PGA Tour 2K23 retains the series' reputation of being a solid golf game despite some notable issues that don't affect the gameplay too harshly. The aim for a realistic golf simulator is still present, but things like swing forgiveness and a new control method opens things up for more players of a lower skill level to jump in and have fun. With those solid modes, PGA Tour 2K23 has some real legs even when the presentation isn't mind-blowing. It'll be interesting to see how it and future iterations will stack up once EA gets back into the sport. Until then, golf fans will be well served with this title.

Score: 8.0/10