I am in my 60's, My golf passion started on the Commodore 64 with the absolutelly wonderful World Class Leaderboard series by Bruce and Roger Carver, couldn't get enough of it.
Jack Nicklaus Golf was a revelation when it came out because it represented such a leap forward graphic and gameplay wise, but the game that blew everything away was back in 92 when Links appeared on floppy by access. I still have all the floppies and original box. The courses and characters and game play redefined the sports golf genre and access did such a wonderful job that it was a very sad day when the franchise was sold to Microsoft, who although gave us Links expansion pack's to go with Links 2001 and 2003, it just didn't seem the same, The golfers went from Fuzzy looking like fuzzy to something that just didn't quite look like him. I had a feeling MS would dump the game in just a few short years, but did the right thing in giving permission for devout followers of the game to continue patching both 01 and 03 over various years, to keep the game alive. Customization is the key to any game and Links certainly has that, were by one could create everything from the golfer to clubs and everything in between, the same group of people like Rehit, Mike and Andrew Jones, No relation I am lead to believe and Mark, sorry forgot your last name, from Microsoft who with others continued to bring out the patches year after year.
2003 switched from Links to Tw series, Not sure what caused me to look else were at the time, I think a friend introduced me to the play and just loved it. Made my 1st humble course 3 years later, I actually had all the holes going the same way, so the wind rarely changed lol. Got serious year later and made my 1st Real course with the help of a mate who layed it out in terrain assist, that was Royal Perth Golf club, 30 min drive from my place on the south side of the swan river here in Perth WA. Since then have been involved with online golf in one way or another, either playing or using the TA to make my own real courses, and last few years managed to work out how to make my own tournament structures in max and texture sets in Photoshop thanks to some wonderful friends of mine, who also allowed me to become part of the old original PGAX design team that moved onto the CGX design team due to a change of name following a legal challenge from the PGA.
In time we evolved as an expert only site pushing out some of the finest golf courses, well in my mind the finest golf courses for TW as we followed the US and Euro PGA Schedules, last few years we opened the site up for all levels of play and introduced a challenger series of tournaments for anyone that wanted to play weekly golf on the same courses the Real Pro's played, created as realisticly as was possible with 30m Dems, at times for US 10m Dems scanned to recreate the terrain as close as possible to the real course, polished off with everything one would expect to see in tournament play.
The same people i mentioned above when I 1st visited PP, was enough for me to realize that this was the next step in the evolution of golf sims and the 1st serious representation of what a golf sim should be, thats why I didn't hesitate to buy into early access, I still have Links 2003 on my computer and regurly play all the great courses that were offered up by MJ and Co for a small nominal fee, tried to learn the APCD but just couldn't come to grips with it, if TW hadn't come along in time I probably would have. Couldn't wait to be part of the most exciting project that has come along since EA did the dirty on PC gamers with TW 08, and that pathetic excuse for a golf sim TWO.
