If you’ve been playing PGA Tour 2K23 since the game was released and think that you’ve experienced the extent of its competitive modes, you better think again. Those in the know within the community recognize that the game’s ultimate competitive career mode doesn’t actually exist within the game itself but instead online at TGC Tours. The website that was created nearly a decade ago, before the series evolved from The Golf Club into PGA Tour 2K thanks to developer HB Studios’ partnership with 2K, has always existed as a place where scores can be compiled and compared across all platforms. It’s progressed over the years into a comprehensive realm complete with various tours and flights depending on your preferred game difficulty and personal skill level. If you’d like to know more about the origins of the site and its development, check out this interview we conducted with the site’s creators back in 2018.
With TGC Tours about to tee up its 10th season this week, we checked in by e-mail with Scott Doyley from the site to get an update on what’s been going on with the site over the last five years as well as a look at what people can expect from the upcoming season and beyond.
Operation Sports: TGCTours has experienced the evolution of the series from The Golf Club days up to its partnership now with 2K. Did the game’s association with 2K affect TGCTours in any way? More members joining maybe? Or did it perhaps present any new challenges?
Scott Doyley: The player base for the game has grown since 2K came on board. That combined with a pandemic made PGA Tour 2K21 and PGA Tour 2K23 very popular games. We benefited from this increase in popularity by having our largest active numbers on TGCTours the past couple of seasons.
Our current structure fits approximately 2,500 weekly golfers comfortably. During the height of the pandemic, we were above those numbers. Â We are setup to handle large numbers even beyond our ideal capacity. Things have eased off slightly since then as the world returned to some normalcy and a new golf game from EA was released which also took some golfers from the 2K pool.
2K has a long history of well received sports game franchises. Their presence hasn’t changed much for TGCTours. They are still supportive of us and we of them. It’s been a seamless transition pre and post-2K.
In your opinion, what have been the biggest innovations with TGCTours in recent years? What else are you still hoping to implement on the site in the future?
Doyley: The last time we talked to you was before the start of Season 5. We were just introducing Promotion Events and talking about expanding the Challenge Circuit back then. Today we have dialed in the Promotion Events and have gone from 5 flights in our Challenge Circuit to 12.
We’ve tweaked our promotion system over the years to make progression feel good. The promotion and demotion system is the engine that makes TGCTours work. If you’re struggling, it’s possible to lose your tour card if you demote out of our last tour. You’d land back in the Qualifying Pool looking to secure a card again. Then someone that shot well enough in the weekly qualifying event will replace you which strengthens the tours. The Qualifying Pool is where the overflow goes, so we really have no limits to how many golfers we can accommodate.
On the other hand, if you shoot well enough to earn a tour card in our lower tours you tend to have a bigger window for improvement. If things click and you start shooting lights out compared to your fellow tour members, you can fast track to the next tour immediately. This along with our normal promotion and demotion rules keeps all our flights as balanced as we can. It always feels like a promotion to the next tour brings with it stiffer competition.
Cuts were brought to all tours recently to give everyone that feeling of needing to play well the first two rounds. We also added a 3-Click tour for the new swing method that was introduced in PGA Tour 2K23. We’ve added knockout style playoffs for the last 3 events of the season on our top 3 tours. Another perk of moving up the tours.
Financially, we moved our payment system (donations) to Stripe, which is a safe and secure payment processor. This allows us to track donations accurately, funds the site, and keeps the bills paid.
While development of new features has slowed the past several years, there are still some things we want to get back on the site. I want to get our Twitch page back up and running – it shows all our members that are live streaming the game on Twitch and is a great place to see some live golf. It’s been missing for a while now. Another on my list is adding more stats that we can pull from the data we receive. Things like closest to the pin and length of putts made are two that come to mind.
These days, the majority of new development that goes into the site is admin related and allows me to run everything smoothly and efficiently without the dependency on Tim (Owens), our founder and developer. There are a lot of moving pieces to keep everything working and only a couple of high level admin needed to keep the lights on. That’s a testament to how well the site has been developed. It’s one of the main reasons we’re able to do this for as long as we have. That and the army of volunteers – we couldn’t do it without the community pitching in. Everything we do has group of volunteers behind it. Schedulers, Rangers, Reviewers, Photographers – all these are filled by people volunteering their time.
Have there ever been any talks with HB or 2K about a formal partnership between the PGA Tour 2K and TGCTours?
Doyley: The admin of TGCTours are members of their NextMaker program — but beyond that, no talks of any official partnership.
With esports growing in popularity over the years, is there a possibility of eventually monetizing TGCTours and winners receiving actual cash rewards?
Doyley: There has been discussion of this among admin and we’ve been approached in this area in the past. I won’t say never to this but for the foreseeable future, TGCTours will operate as a free place to play golf that relies on the generosity of our members to keep the clubhouse open.
Adding real money into the mix raises expectations exponentially on how events are run and monitored. Advancements in monitoring and detection are needed before I’d be fully comfortable in cash prizes. I’m sure most gamers are aware of the amount time and money AAA developers put into anti-cheat software – especially the first person shooter genre. Adding cash prizes is a big step and I’m not confident enough that we’re ready for that in the online golf world.
How much time and effort is spent ensuring fair play across TGCTours? What goes into that process these days exactly?
Doyley: The bulk of the work to ensure fair play was done when creating and coding our Fair Play Policy that monitors all swing data for our tours. We monitor swing data for every shot in every round by every golfer and our metrics will flag abnormal results and automatically pull those rounds from the event. From there, we have a process that allows for feedback, instruction and education to hopefully get the golfer back on the tours. With so many different input devices, device settings and swing methods it’s no easy task.
Outside of monitoring for abnormal swing data, we also have rules in place that prevent people from chipping on greens in certain situations. This helps keep the integrity of the game intact as you can’t chip your way out of a situation that normally would require a putt. This rule is policed by the community and has worked well in keeping this a non-issue since we implemented it.
TGCTours is known for having a great database of courses. Can you talk about how all these courses are added and what makes a course ideal for tournament play?
Doyley: You are now asking questions that are not in my circle of expertise. I was wise enough to know that I needed a top tier group of designers to help guide this portion of our community.
Any TGCTours member can submit a course to our database but for it to appear publicly, it needs to go through our Course Reviewers who play each one and vet them against a criteria that was established by a respected circle of designers in our community. From there, if it is approved, the course is then viewable by the public. If you see it in our course database you know it is a quality course and will not be wasting your time playing it.
We currently have over 1,800 approved courses from PGA Tour 2K23 and over 8,300 approved courses since our inception.
Since we get so many courses submitted to us, we are fortunate to be able to be quite picky when selecting courses for TGCTours events. Our reviewers have a long list of things they look for in a course and are good at picking out the ones that stand out from the rest. It’s from this pool of elite courses that our schedulers usually pull from.
These courses are well-sculpted with manageable greens and great visuals. Some are tougher than others but all have a great visual aesthetic to them. Could be any theme or location – as long as it plays well and looks great, it’s got a shot at a tour stop.
Also, a big shout-out to our Course Photographer (Karma4u) who has been with us since our first season. He has taken every course pic (25,000+) in our database. It’s amazing dedication and really helps promote the course before you load it up. First ballot TGCT Hall of Fame for sure!
Any thoughts on the recent release of EA’s PGA Tour game? Did it raise any questions about switching over to that game or perhaps starting a separate tour for it?
Doyley: EA PGA Tour has some shortcomings out of the box that kept us from considering it. The main one being it doesn’t have a course designer. One of the best features we have at TGCTours is the variety of courses we can use across 6 societies, very rarely needing to double up on a course over a 45+ week season. This season we’ll use close to 300 unique courses. That wouldn’t be the case for EA’s game.
We’re also a small team and it would be nearly impossible to support two games simultaneously. We’re happy with PGA Tour 2K23 gameplay and the support and familiarity we have with 2K/HB Studios makes it easy to stay the course.
What can people expect from this upcoming season in TGCTours? Any new wrinkles?
Doyley: We’re at the stage where the formula is tried and true – there’s not much need for any sweeping changes. We have a full 48-week schedule ready to kick off on October 1st. Recently we’ve opened up qualifying events to our majors to all members with a tour card. That gives everyone a shot to try and get into the big events. We mimic the PGA Tour schedule on our top tour so when there’s a big event on TV, it’s also a big week on TGCTours.
One special addition to the schedule for this upcoming season is the Olympic Golf Tournament. It’s unique and is always a fun time trying to qualify and play for your country. Everyone has a chance to qualify but only a few get to participate. It’s part of what makes competitive online golf fun – always something to chase!
