It's Masters Week, So Where's Augusta National in PGA Tour 2K25?

I don’t think it’s going out on a limb to say that the Masters and Augusta National are as big as the sport of golf gets. I have played golf off and on since I was four years old, and the Masters has always been the holy grail for me and many others. As much as my love of the sport has waxed and waned through the years, I always show up to watch the Masters. If there’s any course I’d love to play, it’s Augusta National. If there’s any golf tournament I’d love to go to, it’s the Masters.

And the pageantry, history, and cultural footprint goes beyond the event itself. Many people who have never played a round of golf in their lives love Happy Gilmore, and the entire film builds up to answering the question of who will win the “gold jacket” (and grandma’s house).

And yet, you can count on one hand the number of times the Masters and Augusta National have been in video games. Its Masters Week, and yet we don’t have the Masters. This means it’s time to play The Blame Game, and I think we should start at the scene of the crime.

The Blame Game Has Many Contestants

The folks at Augusta National have always been deeply protective of the course and the mystique of it all, and I would argue that has been to the detriment of the sport at times. The folks at Augusta National have dealt with criticism for being extremely old-fashioned, and it’s the sort of criticism that gets thrown at the sport of golf as a whole at times.

Regardless, when we finally got the Masters in a golf video game, it was this monumental moment for EA’s Tiger Woods series. We got Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters, and we even got Jim Nantz on the call (who would later go on to be one of the worst play-by-play commentators for Madden, so maybe he should have just stayed as just the voice of the Masters).

Of course, the irony is it took EA about three years to create and get Augusta National into the game, and then the series was essentially on life support less than two years later and put on the shelf for 7+ years soon after that. The double irony is EA got back in the game in 2023, likely paid a handsome sum to get the Masters back in their golf game, and now both have essentially died all over again.

Whether it was due to sales not being good enough or just not believing in the product, EA has clearly given up on its golf series all over again. Some of the developers working on EA’s golf game have ended up at HB Studios and did work on PGA Tour 2K25, so it’s not like all was lost, but HB Studios in part exists in its current form because of the last falling out EA had with its golf franchise — HB Studios was the development studio who helped develop some of EA’s games, including Tiger Woods, years back.

At this point, EA has a track history with this sort of thing. Sports games, and especially sports game revivals, are on extremely short leashes over the past 15 years. From NBA Live to NFL Blitz to NBA Jam to EA PGA Tour, all these games got one shot and then were quickly swept back under the rug. (In the case of NBA Live, it never even really got to officially come back again, it just got stuck in development limbo.)

Now, none of those games were fantastic revivals when compared against their legacies, but it’s extremely rare for sports games to be at their best in their first year back in the game. EA Sports College Football 25 is the exception to the rule when it comes to this sort of stuff, and EA just doesn’t seem to want to accept that. Plus, it’s not like College Football 25 is anywhere close to perfect (or the best it ever has been), it’s just that it was a breath of fresh air and sold extremely well so it was never really in doubt it would continue to exist for ‘26.

Whatever EA’s ultimate rationale for pulling the plug is, the Masters has been part of EA’s downfall twice now. So, perhaps the true “curse” in EA’s games is the Masters Curse and not the Madden Curse.

The LIV And PGA Of It All

This brings us back to Masters Week and Round 1 itself. There are already a host of kick-ass stories after day one:

• Justin Rose leading after a round at the Masters for a 9th time. He’s the oldest player to lead since Fred Couples, and Rose is still hunting for that first green jacket.

• Speaking of Couples, he’s the second-oldest player, at age 65, to shoot under par at the Masters — just one month younger than Tom Watson was at the time.

• CBS is doing its 70th straight Masters broadcast.

• McIlroy still can’t stop shooting himself in the foot in early rounds at the Masters. He was doing great — until he wasn’t. He melted down on the final four holes and is now back in a familiar spot trailing the field by many strokes heading into Round 2.

• Scottie Scheffler feels somewhat inevitable once again after another stellar start, and Ludvig Aberg is trying to follow-up on a great rookie appearance at the tourney and breakthrough his second go around.

• And then you still have the LIV of it all as DeChambeau is in 5th after Round 1, and Jon Rahm continues his meltdown in majors after being one of the three best golfers in the world before he left for LIV.

And the LIV-PGA dispute is where I do want to go next with The Blame Game. Whatever your feelings are about either organization, it’s clear at this point that LIV has lost. Nobody is watching, nobody cares, and the competition in LIV is mostly a joke. However, the folks at the PGA are far too petty to just let a final agreement come to fruition and end this rift. LIV has plenty of money to hang around and continue the charade rather than totally cave, and so outside of majors, both sides are weaker for it.

This hurts the sport, and by proxy, it hurts the video games. I’m not sure the Masters would be in PGA Tour 2K25 even under the best of circumstances considering how meticulous the folks at Augusta National are about their course being perfectly captured, but PGA’s influence and attention might be more on this sort of thing if it wasn’t totally consumed by these dragged out negotiations with LIV.

No one is going to shed a tear for Jon Rahm after he took the bag from LIV (rumored to be as much as $300 million upfront), but both EA and 2K’s games are also severely lacking in the pros department in part because of this silly spat that caused some pros to end up outside the PGA tent.

I also don’t know what the actual agreement is between EA and Augusta National. Is it a WWE-WCW situation** where Augusta only gets paid by EA if they honor their agreement rather than sign with 2K? Is it a situation where Augusta National folks are just fed up after a second cancellation or only trust EA to do their course correctly?

(**For non-wrestling fans, after WWE bought WCW, wrestlers like Kevin Nash, Hulk Hogan, and Goldberg still had WCW contracts that were guaranteed. They were in a situation where they were being paid more to stay home and collect those WCW checks rather than break their contracts and sign with WWE on lesser deals.)

Ultimately, I don’t care what the reasoning is, the point is the PGA isn’t able to exert whatever leverage it has to get Augusta National to not be so old-fashioned or hold out for every single dollar rather than do what’s best for the sport and get into 2K’s game.

The Stupidity Of It All

Licensing has been a big hang-up in many sports games over the years. It’s why NFL 2K doesn’t exist anymore, and even if we don’t want to admit it, it’s one of the two biggest reasons any sports game succeeds or fails. Ever since that nut was cracked and game companies realized they could get team and player licensing into their games, it’s been the biggest expense and biggest reason why a game succeeds or fails outside of the quality of the game itself. I would assume development costs might finally exceed licensing costs (which is its own problem), but how many sports don’t have their top event in a video game in 2025? Can you imagine how bizarre it would be if Madden did not have the Super Bowl?

It makes zero sense. It’s frankly insane and incredibly stupid that this continues to happen. I’m not even sure who to blame the most on this front, but it’s been shown time and time again how important video games are for real sports. Their relationship is symbiotic, and both are better off when the video games are of the highest quality possible. Part of that quality is the licensing.

PGA Tour 2K25 is in the middle of an exciting week. TGC Tours registration is back open, 2K is finally starting to correct their VC mistakes, and HB Studios is pumping us up with Double XP and the like because everyone knows its Masters Week.

And yet, we have to sneak around like trolls who have escaped from under the bridge, rummaging around in the dark as we search for Augusta National sustenance. On OS, we’ve shown you before how to seek out Augusta National on PGA 2K’s custom course servers, and the community continues to try and keep people informed about how to find good versions of Augusta National. Still, it’s not the same, and it’s this game of hide-and-seek we have to play because it’s not in 2K’s best legal interests to allow us to play fantastic replicas of Augusta.

I don’t know how we don’t continue to end up in these situations (short of EA’s golf game not always dying soon after securing the right to Augusta National), but it’s 2025 and the Masters and Augusta National should always be in the official PGA video game.

Until next time y’all. And, as always, thanks for reading.

-Chase

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