I’m standing in the middle of the 18th fairway at Oak Hill, 231 yards from the hole. I check the leaderboard and confirm that Patrick Cantlay, in the penultimate group just ahead of me, has parred the 18th to finish at eight under par. I’m on 10 under myself, so I only need a bogey to win the tournament, but even with a slight tailing wind I’m right on the limit: I need to nut a three-wood to reach the famously elevated green. Do I risk plunging into the spongy rough on the near-vertical bank short of the green? Or if I lay up, do I trust myself to find the fairway and then wedge to within easy two-putt distance?
A few weeks ago I bought a used Xbox 360 and a copy of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14 on eBay, and frankly, I don’t want to be writing this column, or even watching the live final-round coverage from Scottsdale as I type – I want to resume my own pursuit of a make-believe PGA Tour card. This realization embarrasses me. But then, it’s dark and cold outside, my two real rounds of golf in January were too wet and windy to be enjoyable, and my lovingly tolerant wife doesn’t grimace when I punch the air in my living room.
I’m not here to write a full review of TW14, but let me say this: I’ve been playing console and computer games since the Commodore 64, and the last time I obsessed about a golf game to this extent, I was too young to know better. Its degree of difficulty is perfect: earlier versions of Tiger Woods were too hard (I can swing my own clubs more effectively than a Wii remote) or too easy (routinely shooting in the 50s with cartoon-like ball spin), but so far the TW14 swing system – pull the analogue movement stick down to take away, flick up to follow through – has proven easy to grasp but tricky to master. The game’s HD graphics superbly replicate the landmarks and terrain of the courses I have seen in person. Most importantly, its tournament mode – licensed to include all four majors, 16 other PGA Tour events and dozens of real golfers – far surpasses anything I’ve seen.
That, for me, is why TW14 matters. I knew from a disappointingly early age that I’d never be a professional golfer, but this game lets me feel the difference between grinding to finish T-33rd instead of T-37th and protecting a two-shot lead with one hole to play. It lets me warm up for The Masters with four rounds at the Valero Texas Open. After completing several challenges in the “Legends of the Majors” mode, it actually lets me play as Jack Nicklaus in the 1986 Masters. (Drool…) It also lets me believe in a world where the Web.com Tour goes to Oak Hill and Royal Birkdale, which is so wrong that it’s so very right.
Back at Oak Hill, I nailed my three-wood but caught the bank two-thirds of the way up. From a thick lie I aimed well past the pin and swung my 60-degree wedge deep and hard into the grass, popping my ball out and up to within three feet of the hole. A battlefield promotion to the PGA Tour is now only two wins away.