Sitting across from Jim Zielinski, Golden Tee co-creator and Course Designer since 1989, as he details his role in the game’s inception, storied 30+ year history, and what the future holds for the most successful coin-op game ever, one thing became abundantly clear. He’s a guy who loves golf, who strives to create golf games for other people who love golf, and he’s damn good at it. With Jim’s trackball slammin’ hand steadily at the helm of course creation, as the game evolves with Golden Tee PGA TOUR Edition, people who love golf have got a lot to be excited about.

       Jim began his career with Incredible Technologies in 1988 before they had a game to call their own, joining the team as their first and only QA employee, working on Commodore 64 and other software for third-party developers. Or as he so eloquently put it, “You know, grunt work for other people.” He met a programmer namedLarry Hodgson, now Senior Vice President at IT, while working on some of those C64 projects. They formed a friendship around their shared love of the gentleman’s game, although he says they’re both quite bad at it. Larry was working on a golf simulator, not entirely unlike the setup you’d find at your area Top Golf establishment (remember, this was the late eighties), and asked if Jim would be interested in designing courses for the sim. He was, and he did. Unfortunately, the simulator didn’t pan out, but IT had taken note of their endeavors, and they saw an opportunity to capitalize on the work Larry and Jim had already put into the project.

       Richard Ditton, co-founder, and Executive Vice-President of Incredible Technologies approached the pair, and suggested that they use their assets to create a coin-op title, affording them the freedom to decide which type of interface was best suited for the game. They all shared experience working with a trackball (a 3-inch white ball, similar to a billiards cue ball) on titles like Capcom Bowling and decided that the “analog” feel of the device made it their best option. Previously released golf games had relied on traditional arcade micro-switch based controls, meaning that they player presses a button…and that’s it. Generally, this would be in tandem with a “power meter” or similar game mechanic, and the force of a player’s swing was relative to the timing of their input. The trackball changed all of that. The force the player exerted on the trackball translated to the force they exerted on their in-game swing. Hooks and slices became a direct result of a player’s movement, and they were able to finesse their shots. They felt them. This break from binary input is where Golden Tee began, and laid the foundation of the game for decades to come.

       Thirty plus years later, the touch and feel that Golden Tee was born out of is still very much in place. The current and next iterations of the game, Golden Tee 2021, and Golden Tee PGA TOUR Edition, utilize a revised version of the same interface the original Golden Tee arcade cabinet used in 1989.  Jim and the entire development team, have taken great care to ensure that a player who hasn’t touched a Happ trackball in over ten years can come back to the game and enjoy the same experience they did a decade ago. That’s not to say that the game hasn’t changed over time. Major iterative GT releases have delivered increased graphical fidelity, competitive online play, character and equipment customizations, an impressive roster of playable courses that has grown to over 90 deep, and a commercial-quality home edition of the arcade classic. The core of the game has remained deliberately constant, and changes brought on by technological advances in the ever-evolving amusement and video game environments have always been secondary to consistent delivery of the GT “feel” veterans have come to know like second nature. Jim Z. reassures players worried about changes to the game with the inclusion of PGA TOUR, “The Golden Tee that players know and love is always going to be there.”

       The all-new Golden Tee PGA TOUR cabinet and hardware will deliver a next-generation experience for fans new and old. They’ll experience GT presented in 4K for the first time, built-inNFC capabilities will allow for seamless, easy, and touch-free payments and player check-ins, and the addition of real-world PGA TOUR courses are just small scratches on the surface of what is to come in this new era of Golden Tee Golf.PGA TOUR Edition will debut withthree real courses: TPC Sawgrass, TPC Boston, and TPC Deere Run, with more TOUR courses being added with each yearly update.

       The licensed PGA TOUR courses, which were created using 3D assets and scans of their real-world counterparts, offer a more straightforward “golf” experience compared with Jim Z’s original creations, and a potentially easier point of entry for GT newcomers. “We wanted to make sure that anyone can walk up and play this game. With PGA TOUR courses, if you just hit the ball straight, you’re playing golf and you’re having fun. I think everyone’s going to enjoy them, but they’re going to be accessible courses and add to our repertoire. Hopefully, we’ll get those people to understand, we really are providing golf. What’s great about it is, it doesn’t take away from the players who love Golden Tee now and might attract some players who normally wouldn’t play Golden Tee. So, I think that’s a win across the board. The marriage of these two things, the simple and the challenging, really unlocks, I think, a potential to really grow the community and build something the veterans are going to be happy to watch develop.”

       When Jim approaches a new Golden Tee course design, he does it with the players in mind. “A lot of it is actually dictated by the players. Through the years, we’ve gravitated towards the things they like.” As an avid golfer (in both real world and video game varieties), he looks inward to ask himself, “What would I like to play? What is something that I think would be fun? We’ve tried to provide some interesting locations, places for people to escape to, you know?” Jim recalls the development of Tundra Peak, a course that rests at the top of Mt. Everest, and how players were less enthusiastic about the design than he’d expected going into the project. “The course was kind of grey and dingy, and we found that people want to escape, they want something nice to look at. Because of that, our tropical courses are always popular. Especially when it’s February in the upper Midwest, some palm trees and sunny grass is a nice thing to see in a bar.”

       The way those courses play is largely influenced by feedback from fans as well. “When we first started, we would have maybe one or two par-fives for every nine holes, and then maybe two par-threes. Then we started adding drivable par-fours, which players really seemed to love. GT 2009’s Bonnie Moor had a mix of par-threes, and drivable par-fours that players really like because the potential of scoring well is there. They can't always get there, but players like the ability of knowing that they can get that really low score. The more risk and reward you can add to a nine, I think the better. So that's my philosophy. Listening, seeing what the players like, and then doing what I want to play.”

       The spirit of Golden Tee is alive and well. For long-time fans of the series, bringing the PGA TOUR brand and licensed courses to the Golden Tee platform is an extension to the game they’ve come to know and love throughout the last 30 years. Jim Z. and the GT team have been hard at work on a fresh set of oh-so-distinctly Zielinski creations that are slated for release in 2022, 2023, and into the great video golf beyond. These creative and unique Golden Tee courses will find their way to both PGA TOUR Edition AND Golden Tee LIVE cabinets, with IT committing a minimum of five years of support and update development for the current generation of commercial and home edition games. “I think PGA TOUR will actually allow me to skew a little bit riskier, because we’ll have the PGA TOUR stuff as a base for the new players. It’ll allow me to tweak things up and go the other direction.”

       Jim Z. wears his excitement for the addition of PGA TOUR to Golden Tee, the ever-evolving product of his life’s work, on his sleeve. His approach to the marriage of the classic “arcade-y” Golden Tee, matured over the course of decades to better serve its elite class of long-time fans, and PGA TOUR…is one of unbridled enthusiasm. Golden Tee PGA TOUR Edition arrives with the potential to motivate exponential growth of the GT community and affords Jim the creative freedom to craft the next wave of Zielinski magic that’s drawn diehards to the trackball for so many years. Yeah, people who love golf have got a lot to be excited about.