Golden Tee: How Golf's Original Video Game Got Its Start

You click and aim, slide the track-ball back, and fling it forward toward the golf course on the screen in front of you.

You already know what we’re talking about: Golden Tee.

Perhaps the most iconic of all golf video games, you would be hard pressed to find a sports bar in North America – and plenty of garages, too – without a Golden Tee cabinet. The game has been a fixture for three decades boasting thousands of enthusiasts, smile-inducing moments, and yes, even a professional-type circuit of players.

And no matter if you’re one of the best (real) golfers in the world or just a youngster looking for something fun to do in a local restaurant, Golden Tee continues to be the game to look for.

There’s joy in nostalgia, and Golden Tee offers that in droves.

“The trackball you use to control your golfers’ swing is the same trackball we used in 1989 when the game first came out,” Kevin Lindsay, the amusement marketing manager for Golden Tee parent company Incredible Technologies says with a smile. “Even some of the original game code that was used in 1989 is still used in the game now because it works. You don’t want to tweak it, and there’s no need to tweak it.”

Lindsay isn’t just a Golden Tee staffer. Although he’s worked for the company for nearly seven years, he’s spent his entire life around the game. In the 1990s, his parents had friends who, in a suburb of Chicago, owned a VFW bar. He was young – really young – and was doing little-rascal type things in the VFW. When he turned and ran away from his parents, so the story goes, he literally ran into the Golden Tee cabinet.

“I could barely touch the trackball standing up when I was a kid but that Golden Tee cabinet was nowhere near the actual bar at the VFW, so it allowed me to come visit. After baseball, instead of wanting to get a hot dog or pizza, I wanted to go play Golden Tee and hang with the adults,” Lindsay says. “I didn’t even like real golf at that time. But when I was 12 the (other adults) said they couldn’t play Golden Tee with (me) anymore because I was kicking their butts and they were embarrassed.

“They still joke about it. And when I tell them I’m head of marketing for the company, they're not shocked at all about that.”

Lindsay finally had his first 18 holes of ‘real’ golf when he was 18 and in college – “I grew to love golf because of Golden Tee” – and appreciated the constant pursuit of perfection on the links. With no hint of irony, he’s shot 35-under before in a round of Golden Tee. It’s a shocking number, yes, but there are championship-level guys who do that on the regular. Still, Golden Tee, just like real golf, is difficult – if impossible – to master.

“At the end of the day, 99 percent of us aren’t going to have an amazing score in a real golf tournament so Golden Tee is that fantasy land where it’s easy to play but still challenging to master,” Lindsay says. “That’s why – just like golf – there’s not a ton of people who have mastered it. We’re always trying to shoot that perfect score that doesn’t exist.”

The final national tournament on the Golden Tee Live platform occurred recently. In October, Lindsay says, there will be the first tournament on the new PGA TOUR Golden Tee cabinet. There will be 90-plus original Golden Tee courses and six PGA TOUR courses including TPC Sawgrass.

“It was probably the best send-off we could have for a platform that is almost 20 years old,” Lindsay says.

Next year is Golden Tee’s 35th anniversary. You’ll still see the trackball and the cabinets and the usual color schemes you’re used to. Whether it’s in the back corner of a bar or front and center in a restaurant or set up in a friends’ games’ room, whether you’re a younger or older golf fan, or just a group of buddies catching up over a cold drink, Lindsay says you can’t help but gravitate towards Golden Tee.

Outside of Pac Man, Lindsay says, there aren’t a lot of games that have the longevity Golden Tee has. There’s been a yearly course update since 1995 – an unheard-of length of time, he says – and the legacy gaming platform itself is just being replaced for the first time since 2004 – also unheard of. Golden Tee was one of the first eSports efforts almost a decade before eSports was even “a thing,” Lindsay explains. The game has been part of peoples’ lives, Friday nights at restaurants, and weekend afternoons in the garage for decades.

Roll it back, fling it forward.

“We’ve survived recessions, the COVID-19 pandemic and more,” Lindsay says, “and there’s just something about the game that keeps people coming back to it.”