There is incredible satisfaction in nailing a perfect long putt in golf, but conversely missing that putt can be tragic, a feeling that The Golf Club 2019 nails pretty well. The Golf Club 2019 is the third in a series developed by HB Studios, with this year including licensing by the PGA for the first time. The inclusion of which allows players to take part in PGA tournaments and majors, on six of the PGA tour’s most prestigious courses.

The game starts out with a short tutorial to learn the basics of hitting accurate shots, landing putts, compensating for hills and wind, and even advanced shots involving spin and pitch. The controls throughout are straightforward and provide excellent feedback on how well your drive, or putt was for a given shot. This allows for a game which is easy for beginners to pick up and play but definitely requires work in order to consistently hit accurately.
From there you’ll be put into the main menu to customize your golfer’s appearance, clothing, accessories and golf clubs. With such a huge range of options for all, and customisation available, a lot of time can be sunk into just creating your character, however the defaults a good enough and varied enough if you want to get on and play. Many of the clothing and accessory options are locked off initially and are unlocked either through progressing through tours, completing sponsorship challenges or spending the in-game credits learnt by leveling up your golfer.

The difficulty once you begin your first tournament ramps up slowly but consistently as you play through the three PGA tournaments available at the beginning of the game, with a minimum placement required & other placement challenges needing to be met in order to advance through to the next tournament. Before beginning the game a difficulty will need to be chosen which dictates how difficult your competition will be, however this can be changed after every tournament or course, along with how many rounds you’ll play in each tournament or tour. By default, on any given hole the game will select a good middle-ground club and shot type for you, allowing changes to more risky strategies as required, something that is definitely needed as tournaments go on and the difficulty increases.

The game includes six licensed PGA tour courses including TPC Boston, Sawgrass and Scotsdale, all of which look amazing and feel very genuine. In addition, there are numerous in-game courses and while many of these are distinctive in their own right, some do lack the attention to detail or atmosphere of the included PGA courses. In some instances the standard courses can feel very static and even empty in some places with a noticeable variation from the PGA courses. It’s not just courses which can feel a little static however, the announcing throughout the game is inconsistent, with course and tournament introductions presented well, however the commentary for individual shots becomes repetitive and generic quickly. This repetition can extend to some of the animations after landing a shot below par or above par, however the quality of the animations themselves looked nice and natural, with good detail. There is a lot of nice attention to detail throughout the game, from the little divets of shots taken, to ball lines in the sand traps and goes so far as the inclusion of the odd bird in the background and chatter of the crowd in the background making the game feel a bit more authentic.

Aside from the PGA Tour itself, the game features a range of multiplayer and online options, including local matches with numerous play modes, online matchmaking, and a societies mode to arrange solo or online tournaments. The game does a good job of balancing matches between other players by ensuring a player’s golfer level does not provide a distinct advantage or disadvantage over other local or online players. There is also a return of the course customisation of previous games, which allows players to procedural generate their own courses, modify as needed and share online.

The Golf Club 2019 is a fun, and very deep golfing title. For golf fans both beginner and experienced there’s a lot here to like, and beyond the tournaments themselves there is enough to build, and customise that’ll definitely make the game a real time sink. The game does an excellent job of creating suspense on every hole, and scoring one or two below par on a specific hole feels like an achievement as much as scoring triple or quad bogies (3 or 4 over par) can feel crushing. While the game can feel a little flat in places, the attention to detail, huge array of options available to players and feedback from nailing the perfect two under par creates an authentic and rewarding experience, if you manage to keep under par.