The Golden Tee you have known all these years is dead. A moment of silence please. The Golden Tee you will get to know in Golden Tee 2016—the one that will greet you the moment you hit the start button—is very much alive. And yes, it looks spectacular.

For the first time since LIVE launched, our menu system has changed. The look is different; the feel is different; the functionality is geared more toward YOU. 

Accomplishing this feat was no easy task. In fact, remodeling something so entrenched the game took basically the full year and more than 1,000 hours. The man at the center of this work was artist Mike Sanchez. Mike is also IT’s resident 80’s Music Aficionado, for what that is worth. (Lots, probably.) 

“The goal was to update the user interface with a fresh, modern face, make it easier to use and allow for faster entry,” Sanchez said. “I wanted to change just about everything. Every selection, piece of art, font, and even how a player navigates the interface is new.”

Arriving to this ideal sweet spot took time, and again, many different attempts. The concept was to always have nice, big images, although getting everything on the same theme and finding just the right colors were the things Sanchez toyed with the most. Here is one of the earlier concepts he came up with.

And here is what he ultimately ended up with.

It hits the moment you big. The color scheme, the gorgeous screen shots that hover behind, the placement of menu items, everything. It is easy on the eyes and on your watch. And the addition of the keypad, which is fully integrated in the sign-in section, allows you to play a game of Golden Tee—with your account money—and never lift your wallet out of your back pocket.

And yes, for the first ever, we have added a back button. No matter what those beers do to your clumsy menu-clicking hands, you can now go back to the previous screen and do the whole thing over again without starting over.

Players can actually explore without having to wait for the game to “timeout” in order to make a different selection,” Sanchez said. “It’s easier than ever to get in and play a round now.”

One of the other notable changes exists on the course selection screen. On top of being completely rebuilt and absolutely beautiful, there is now a “random” button. Forget about spinning the trackball to see where you and a buddy will play; just push one button and you will be thrown onto virtual creation.

Here it is, all of it, in action.

It’s yet another way to save time and allow you to do what you love most: play Golden Tee.

The new menu system joins the new game modes and new features to give us the most robust update we have seen in years. And it will all be yours late September.