Ahead of our hands-on preview with PGA Tour 2K25, we asked you for your burning questions about the game. Now that we’ve played the full game and spoken to the dev team, we’ve answered as many of them as we can.
Some of the answers come from our own time with the game, while others come from a chat with Josh Muise, Senior Creative Director, and Jordan Ault, Senior Design Manager at HB Studios.
PGA Tour 2K25 Questions & Answers

Is the list of playable Pros released final?
Yes, there are 11 playable Pros, three of which are new to the series. You can also play as Chris McDonald, who plays Shooter McGavin in Happy Gilmore.
Can you play as a Pro in MyPlayer?
No, you cannot.
If a desert theme is chosen in course creator, can the main ground be sand and not be considered deep rough?
When you choose the theme for a created course, the game automatically adds grass hole templates into the design area. You cannot have sand as the main ground on the holes, only in the out of bounds areas.
Can user-created courses be added to MyPlayer?
A “curated list of user-created courses” can be added to MyPlayer seasons, but it’s not clear how often those courses will change. You cannot add whatever courses you like whenever you want to.
Can you tell us a little bit about how you incorporate the real life golfers like Tiger Woods and Max Homa into the game in terms their body scans and how they have got different swing styles?
Josh Muise: “Certainly, so we were always kind of thrilled. It’s kind of a pinch yourself moment when we get to look at the roster of talent that we have the opportunity to work with year over year. You know, the Tiger Woods of the world. They’re so generous with their time.
We go in, we get them to go in the truck, go through the full scanning process, which, I’ll be quite honest, if you’ve not had the opportunity to see those trucks, can be a bit of an intimidating process. Every angle of you is taken into account. Cameras are surrounding you and taking it in. So we really do seek to get the truest one to one representation that we can in the highest fidelity possible. So we’ll scan our pros from head to toe to ensure that we’re getting the best likeness that we can.
Then once we bring them into our product, we’re looking to kind of go back to that true north, which is that authentic golf experience. And so these pros are some of the best of the best in the world, and so we feel that their primary placement in the product lives within that career mode experience, while you can use them in some casual gameplay modes as well. Really, where you’re going to see the pros and have the most engagement with them is in the MyCareer experience, where you’ll be encountering them as rivals throughout your MyCareer. As you go through, you have the opportunity to opt into these kind of head to head rivalries and challenges with the pros, as you refine your game and you work your way towards legendary status and building up your skills to win the FedEx Cup, hopefully at the end of it all.”
People have been saying PGA Tour 2K25 MyPlayer has a lot of NBA 2K vibes. Is there anything feature wise you’d like to take from that series to add it into PGA Tour?
Muise: “You know, I will say that our partners across the portfolio at NBA 2K have an incredible product, certainly one I look forward to playing every year. I do find it hard sometimes to kind of compare one to the other. You know, we are on our own path, and we’re building out the best golf simulation experience that we can. And so I would say right now, we’ve kind of got some some plans of our own that we’re moving towards building out, and you’re going to see a lot of those come to light in PGA Tour 2K25.
But in terms of some things that they’re doing on their side, specifically, that jumps out at me, I’m always careful to not commit to something in advance. So let’s just say we’re always keeping an eye on them. We certainly appreciate what they do. And I would say it’s always good to have somebody within the 2K family doing exciting work to be able to look at and take into consideration.”
In the last game, some of the real life courses built by the community were made unavailable. Is there any background as to why? And in regards to 2K25, what are the rules for the custom builds? Which courses can you replicate?
Muise: “So in general, the course designer is always intended for our audience to kind of build out the course of their dreams. Those tools are really there to be a best in class opportunity for course creators to think about, collaborate, combine, and build out ideas of elements of a course they fell in love with growing up, or a PGA Tour course that kind of represents one of the great cathedrals of professional golf.
It’s from our point of view as the group that is tied to building the tools it’s it’s always been less about using it as a kind of diagnostic tool, to one to one replicate something that is existing in the real world. It’s more of that authentic fantasy that we’re trying to put in the hands of the creators, to really not just look out and see something and try and build it verbatim, but to take that, be inspired by it, and then really come up with a creation of their own.”
Are there major differences between how different types of courses play? For example, links versus others?
Jordan Ault: “For the longest time, we actually do use the same tools that are in the game for a large chunk of what we put into the official courses. Obviously, there are certain custom clubhouses and buildings and stuff, but for the most part, a lot of the tools are the same, it’s the same physics simulation, all that kind of stuff. So there are a myriad of options to adjust the firmness of the terrain, the speed of greens, all those those fun little tweaks and knobs. When we build a course, all of those things are set alongside the the sculpting and the the planting of the trees to a specific specification.
So that is the case this time as well. I think one of the big key differences this time around is that all of the core physics tunings have gotten a complete overhaul. So we’ve put out some media already around the new terrain system, the upgraded physics and, for bounce and roll physics and ball flights. So that’s really where you’re going to notice the difference this time compared to previous iterations. But in terms of differentiation from one course to the next, it’s all a matter of how the course has been set up by whoever created it, whether it’s us or the course designer in the community creating custom UGC.
And then also, when the player goes to start a custom round, whether it’s in just a single quick play or a private match or in a society event, they have options to diverge from what the default course settings are that the designer set and choose if they want fast greens, or soft fairways, and really tailor their experience for across any course that you want. But for the licensed courses, when you choose the default values, they’re going to be have been tuned by our level design team to match those real life courses.”
What changes have been made to the wind and ball physics for this year’s game?
Ault: “The ball physics, in terms of the how the ball interacts with the terrain, has been changed drastically. It’s not my wheelhouse to talk to specifics of like, you know, we did this to the coefficient of restitution, and this is how we tune these parameters to make sure that the Magnus effect was correct, and all those technical things. That’s really where I would want folks to go and play and feel for themselves, how it’s changed, in terms of the input, as opposed to what was put into it, to make that change, if that makes sense.”
Muise: “Yeah. And I think what might go hand in hand, although not directly related to the wind, is you are going to see a visual difference in the majority of the shots being taken this year, given the overhaul of the control system and moving towards the Evo-swing mechanic. Evo-swing is going to, once you start to progress and move up through different difficulties, it will become clear pretty quickly that we are introducing more of a draw and a fade bias. So ball flights are going to have more curvature to them as they go from the player towards your landing zone, your area.
So you’re going to see different behavioral patterns start to emerge based on a combination of factors, which is the on the ground physics, everything that’s happening at the club face and the impact, but then also the fidelity of the input where the swing has happened, favoring the lie angle and/or your draw or fade bias. So I think Jordan really hit the nail on the head. It’s going to really come to light in the hands of the players, especially those who have had a level of familiarity with kind of what was there in the past. Speaking for myself, I certainly feel that difference, but I would think that it’s probably a combination of several factors versus, as Jordan touched on, me just pointing towards specific things that we did to the wind in isolation.
Will three click perfect swing and EVO swing players be kept separate for the competitive online modes?
Ault: Yeah, okay, so three click, perfect swing, and swing stick. So just to clarify, perfect swing is a difficulty setting, and you can choose to play on perfect swing regardless of if you’re playing three click or swing stick.
If you’re familiar with the difficulties you had, like Amateur, Pro, Pro Am, and so forth. Perfect swing is at the easy end. It’s at the tail end of that. So in terms of difficulty, just as before, ranked matchmaking specifically has a set difficulty that it’s set to, I believe it’s Pro. We have the option to do a custom thing. I think it’s just like stock Pro for rank matchmaking. Casual matchmaking has its own set of rules, which I don’t have in front of me right now, in terms of input.
So three click and swing stick, and we would equate a mouse swing to swing stick as well, if you’re playing on PC, those are the input types. So again, in casual matchmaking, anybody can go in and play whichever they want. It’s a casual experience.
In ranked, we have made some changes there. I don’t think that we’ve announced anything yet. We’ve got more information about multiplayer coming out and feature Dev Diaries, but we have some some things there about ranked matchmaking and also ranked tours. And we, as we have for ranked matchmaking before, we have the ability to add or remove playlists, and also set which control types those playlists can can operate with. So we’ll be announcing what the plan is for launch at some point in time. And then, as we get the game out live, we’ll be keeping a constant eye on how the queues are working, what the community feedback is, and we’ve got the the levers in place to to make adjustments and try things as we need to.
Now that a PGA Tour 2K25 demo is live for everyone to play, you can test the new features for yourself and get the answers to some of your other burning questions.
Published: Feb 4, 2025 04:04 pm