EA Sports PGA Tour: Augusta and The Masters charm, but you need practice

It’s been a decade since Augusta National Golf Course was in a video game, and eight years since we saw St. Andrews on a console. Most fans will find it enough to go back and see these sites. EA Sports PGA Tour — especially following Jon Rahm’s win at The Masters Tournament this past weekend. However, the game plays slightly differently on Xbox Series X, PlayStation 5 and Windows PC. So they should factor in some time to get familiar before gorging on its buffet of 30 “bucket list” destinations.

How do you go about doing this? Honestly, it’s the Challenges mode. Golf doesn’t really need to be reduced to bite-size challenges for video games — it It is Bite-sized challenges with 18 in a round. The Challenges mode was quickly renamed. EA Sports PGA Tour’s signature feature for me, at least in the first week, for how it familiarized me with the tasks these courses will expect later in my (very deep) career mode. I wasn’t prepared to appreciate or enjoy this live-service vehicle as much as I did, but absent a practice facility or tutorial in the video game, I absolutely depended on it to, as they say, get back in the swing of things.

Challenges takes players to one of the game’s 30 courses and gives them three tasks to complete, replicating some performance from real life — for example, Lexi Thompson at the 2019 LPGA Championship or Francesco Molinari making recovery after recovery at The Masters the same year. Every challenge gives you three stars. Those stars give you XP or Reward Points. These two together can help your golfer progress, as well as provide cool cosmetics and new skills. (Though the latter are unlocked through a prominent in-game store menu, it’s important to note that nothing affecting a created golfer’s play or improving their game can be bought for a real-money equivalent. That’s all for cosmetics.)

Grid View

You don’t have to complete all three obligations of a challenge in the same playthrough, either; this is what I meant about Challenges supporting repeated attempts. One challenge could be to land on the green in regulation for all four holes and then make birdies on two. You can choose to focus only on sticking with the greens one time and the birdies the next.

This isn’t to suggest that the challenges aren’t demanding. It took me a couple of hours to clean up the Thursday and Friday moments from this year’s Masters. Some of that was my unfamiliarity with this game’s controls after eight years since the last EA Sports golf game. But some of it, also, was because the surfaces and ball lies are truer to life and therefore more difficult to play — which should be the point of a simulation, after all.

No. 15 at Augusta National — sorry to keep referring back to this course, but I have a feeling a lot of people are playing it right now — is a notorious real-life challenge for tour pros. It’s definitely in range for a chance at an eagle. My previous games were free from worrying about whether I was overshooting the green or rolling long into the water hazards. It is now that I know, and it makes the decision of laying up at 15, or taking a shorter approach, to the green, much more meaningful. Now I know a little more of what was going through Chip Beck’s mind at the 1993 Masters.

EA Sports PGA Tour is as lavishly illustrated as ever; it’s the strongest trait so far of a golf simulation that will take a lot of playing and replaying to truly understand. Again, the Challenges mode offers a bite-sized play that allows you to view the various courses. For some courses, like Pebble Beach, or Augusta, or TPC Sawgrass, I have a thing about waiting to play my first full round there until it’s an event on my created player’s career calendar. They should be prepared and confident, but not embarrassed. These warmups allow me to preserve my personal traditions while still making it easy for them to become a skilled virtual golfer.

Image by EA Orlando/Electronic Arts

Some features are not suitable for golfers. Although there are tons of unlockables and cosmetics that can be used to outfit them, the design of their characters is extremely rigid. Different genders and many ethnicities are represented, but don’t expect them to look much like you, as the faces come from stock templates. EA Sports games have had this problem for a while, particularly when compared with their peers. However, Career offers the opportunity to participate in AI pairs, which can be a bit time-consuming but is worth it for people who prefer full-fat and immersive sports experiences. And for those who truly want to sink into an immersive career, you can start all the way back as an amateur — including in the newly created (2019) Augusta National Women’s Amateur. These are the experiences that I am looking forward to reliving over the next few dozen hours, if not 100, I have available to me to play the game.

Many people see the main selling point as EA Sports PGA Tour is simply the ability to play these courses in a video game; it sounds like a low standard, but rendering them faithfully takes a ton of effort, and EA Sports’ developers still exceeded my expectations. This broadcast is clear and informative, with little touches such as the visit to the Sarazen Bridge. It’s the 15th hole that is giving me trouble. Returning players and new ones alike should expect to put in plenty of time working on their game, however, before they’re confident taking on the likes of Pebble Beach or Whistling Straits. But that’s an essential part of the challenge, and appeal, of golf.

EA Sports PGA Tour Launched April 7, on PlayStation 5, Windows PC and Xbox Series X. Electronic Arts gave us a pre-release downloading code to review the game on PlayStation 5. Vox Media is an affiliate partner. They do not affect editorial content. However, Vox Media might earn commissions for products bought via affiliate links. Here are some links to help you find. additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.