TGC2019

Have you ever loved and hated something at the same time? That’s the way it is for me with TGC2019.

As much as I love some things about this simulator software, other things drive me absolutely nuts. This review will cover the good and the bad as far as I’m concerned with TGC2019. Let’s get it to it.

Shop Now

TGC 2019 Basics and Things To Know

TGC2019 stands for ‘The Golf Club 2019’. It is a realistic physics based video game that has been ported to work with launch monitors instead of xbox controllers. The game is made by HB studios and and a company called Protee-United makes a ‘Golf Simulator Exchange’ Software called ‘GSX’ that lets you play the game utilizing real clubs and balls on your simulator.

The Awesome Stuff I Love About TGC2019

There are no recurring fee’s or additional charges for new courses. I am trying my best to avoid any recurring fee’s that are not absolutely necessary and TGC2019 is a pay once and done. I like that. Compared to some other software you have a recurring fee or additional charge whenever you want to play a new course.

Speaking of courses, the next thing I love is that there are thousands and thousands of courses to play. This is a blessing and a curse. So much so I’m compiling a list of my favorite TGC2019 to play on the simulator as it’s hard to know what is what. Especially since this is video game and it is way easier to smash a 300 yard drive with a Xbox controller, some courses are ridiculously hard to play on the sim. You can do some research in the forum designated for course discovery.

You can have your home course built – or you can build it yourself. There are people out there who can take the government provided lidar data and add their touch to re-create your home course. This is awesome. You can have your home course created and play it to your hearts content if that is something you wanted to do. Check out TheLidarKing if you are willing to pay to have your course created. It seems to be quite the endeavor to recreate one well, even with lidar data, so hiring a pro may be worth it if you really want a certain course done.

There are active online societies and tours. You can join the biggest group over at the GolfSim forums and join their official society within the game itself (Protee United Society). They play the virtual courses that the pro’s play in real life week to week. It’s pretty awesome and competitive. There is also a group at TGCTours but I believe this is more for the console players, not sim players.

The graphics look great. I recognize the holes at Augusta and it looks like it. Even compared to the more expensive and newer competitors, TGC2019 has great graphics. If you want a sharp looking sim setup and having beautiful courses is your thing then I think you will be impressed by TGC2019.

You can play against your ghost from previous rounds and it shows your shots going off and how you hit it before if you are playing the same course. This is a pretty cool feature and lets you try and beat your previous round.

You can choose different tee boxes for different players so everyone hits off of the appropriate tee’s. Great for when the kids come and play with me… or Davey as he hits it like a lil bitch.

Distances are shown on screen as the shot is displaying / going. As your golf ball goes farther, the total distance number on the bottom right goes up as the ball goes. Compared to competitor software JNPG which only shows your distances in the post shot recap screen. This is much more enjoyable.

The Critical Review of TGC2019 – What I Do Not Like

First, turning on the system on is buggy. The software locks up and has to be shut down manually and re-started to work properly.

There are three different programs you have to start in a certain order to be able to play which is fine. First you have to turn on the Protee United interface. This is just a tiny program that pops up and down right away, easy peasy. The second program is called ‘GSX’ and it is what reads your launch monitor and makes it work with the software. This one works but it is a little more particular. Once you open it you have to click the ‘connect’ button on GSX and wait until both input and output are connected and green.

The GSX software takes a little bit to get set up the very first time, but since then it has worked pretty well. There were some hurdles with the initial setup (choosing the correct ports for everything and disabling some power saving ‘features’ of Windows 10) but once it’s set up, it’s been working pretty smoothly. Once you click connect, it takes a few seconds and fires right up with a connection. Now we can open the TGC2019 software and the issues begin.

Double clicking TGC2019 icon begins to open the software to the start page, but the game locks up at this point and you can not select TGC2019 from the menu (instead of the older, TGC). It does not let you click on anything.

The only way to fix this is to click and x out of the game and re-start it. But this entails hitting the ‘X’ and waiting for the program to quit responding and then clicking to shut it down anyway. Once shut down, go back to the TGC2019 icon and double click it. It fires up right away and you can click on the proper buttons to move the game forward.

My personal hack is to be ready when you very first open the software to instantly close it again. If you can close it fast enough you do not have to wait for the ‘program not responding’ message to shut the system down. It’s like a game… double click it and have the mouse ready to click the x button as fast as possible. If you can do it within a couple seconds you win! All you have to do now is just re-open it. This saves the time and hassle of having to let it time out and manually end the program. You still have to open the software twice but you at least can do so in a quick time fashion.

Once the game is running there is one more annoying bug that has really burned some players before the playing of the game even begins. If you leave the game on the start screen for more than 90 seconds it erases all your data. Some players have lost a large amount of data by getting distracted during the initial startup and leaving it on the start screen too long. I have no idea why this is so.

Another thing that blows is you can only save one profile. I have eight different players who come over and play on a fairly regular basis and none of them can save their profiles and see individual stats.

This seems to be a Protee-United issue and they have told me via email that in the next update (who knows when that will be) that multiple profiles can be saved. Right now, only the main account can have a profile with any stats saved or avatar changes.

During game play there are some bugs you should know about as well.

There is a ‘low line drive’ shot bug that causes bad physics. If you hit a low line drive that does not get very high off the ground and it hits the ground it shoots straight up instead of running out like a normal worm burner would.

The main solution on the forum is to ‘hit it higher’. When we play, my friends and I each get the first one of those as a free mulligan and then make sure we hit our second shot higher. It is more or less impossible to tell what kind of lie you are on sometimes and well struck shots will not be registered high enough and shoot straight up, killing all your distance. This is the major physics flaw of the software in my opinion and is a well known one in the community. For now, hit it higher.

The course finder and filter system sucks balls. Since anyone can make any course there are often multiple versions of courses with all similar names. There is no great way to tell which course is the good version or the bad, and some of them are really bad. My tip is to try and roll over each course and see how many people have played it. The more plays the course has, the better it is generally speaking.

You can not play in a scramble or shamble mode. Come one give me a break here this should be easy and would make rounds more fun for the group games.

The driving range is extremely basic and boring as hell. There is no way to see all of your shots on the screen so you can check distributions, there is no special saving of your information or driving range session. There is no special practice modes or games that make the driving range enjoyable. You can get out there and hit shots to your hearts content, but there is nothing special about the range or chipping practice.

Chipping is a bit off to me in my personal opinion. It feels like it is way easier to hit chips long on the sim. In real life I have to hit chips what I feel is a little longer than I do on the sim.

There is no good way to remove a player mid-round or to add someone during the round. You also can not pause and continue a group round. Only the main accounts players round can be saved and finished later. Everyone else kicked off of the round if you have to stop it for whatever reason and come back later.

There is no shortcut key for taking a mulligan. You have to wait until it’s your turn to hit again, hit escape and then mouse down to rewind shot to make it work. Why would there not be a shortkey ‘M’ for take mulligan? Another tip about taking a mulligan if you are playing with friends is that you have to wait until it is your turn to hit your second shot before you can hit the escape > rewind and actually take your mulligan.

Updates seem far and few between. I think this is mostly because HB Studios makes the video game which is not relatively expensive and Protee-United makes the simulator version of the software and is limited in what they are able to do to the base software.

It is not officially supported to work with the Foresight GC2 – but it does no problem once properly set up – if you have a GC2 just choose ‘protee’ during the installation prompts whenever it asks you.

TGC2019 Game Play Settings

Here are the settings I currently embrace whenever starting a course.

• Greens: Very Soft
• Green Speed: Slow or very slow
• Fairway: Firm
• Weather: Clear or Cloudy
• Wind: Off, Low or Medium
• Tee’s: Selected by player