APBA Professional Golf (1962)

The APBA Golf Game was origionally published by APBA in 1962. It contained 18 Greatest Holes and came with 32 well known golfers. The 18 Greatest Holes publsihed in the 1962 edition contain 4 different holes than later versions of the 18 Greatest Holes.

As the Golfer card sets ran out of production APBA publshed new sets to replace the out of production sets. This led to the creation of a:

1962/64 set, 1972, 1976, 1978, 1981, 1985 and an All Time Greats Set. Sports Game Publishing and the APBA Journal also published a number of golf sets in later years as well.

8 Courses were published by APBA officially (Two Versions of the 18 Greatest Holes). The now defunct Sports Game Publishing company also published at least 3 more courses for the game adding: Sawgrass, Winged Foot, St. Andrews and Oakmont to the list. The format for these course were 3 to a page on 11 x 17 paper and then changed to 8 1/2 x 11 with one course per page.

ASG Golf (George Gerney | www.asggames.com) has gone on to publish courses for: Bethpage Black, Pinehurst No 2., Augusta National, Pebble Beach, TPC Scottsdale, St. Andrews, TPC Sawgrass and Bay Hill.

From the APBA Journal: An Eighth APBA Golf Course (For Holes 3,4,5,6 of the greatest hits)

"While preparing the Golf Archives Reference Pack (now available from the AJ office). I encountered a letter to the editor in the August 15, 1971, issue of APBA Innings. (Back in those practically prehistoric days, the AJ covered only baseball, leaving APBA's other sports to its competition, AI.)

The letter, by Doug Bauer, notes that the original APBA golf course, the 18 Greatest Holes compilation, had changed between the game's original appearance in the mid-1960's and 1971.

In the original course, holes 3,4,5 and 6 all came from courses in Southem California. Number three was the fourth hole at Riviera Country Club, Los Angeles. a par three. Number four was the eighth hole from Lakeside Golf Course in Hollywood, a par four. APBA's fifth hole was the third at Vaney Club in Santa Barbara, a par four. And number six was the 14th at Los Angeles' Bel Air Country Club, a par five.

In the later version, number three is the 13th hole at Congressional Country Club in Washington, D.C., a par four. APBA's fourth hole is the 14th at Brookline (Mass.) Country Club, a par five. Number five is the eighth hole at Westchester Country Club, Harrison, N. Y., a par four. And number six is the third hole at Akron's Firestone Country Club, also a par four.

As a consequence of these changes, par is 71 in the later course but just 70 in the original version.

So it turns out that there are, In effect, eight APBA golf courses rather than the seven we knew about:Augusta (1964), Merion (1975), Pebble Beach (1976), Firestone (1976), Pinehurst (1977), Pine Valley (1977) and two versions of the 18 Great Holes (1964 and c.1970)."

Sports Game Publishing was a company that published expansions for APBA products, they maintained a web presense from 2002 thru 2006. During that time they produced a number of products for APBA Golf.

The main product that they published was Doctor Clines Advanced Rules for APBA Golf

St. Vincent College (Latrobe, PA) Golf Coach Dr. Thomas Cline's APBA golf innovations and upgrades have been published many times in the APBA Journal, and gamers have acknowledged the accuracy and realism his work has added. Recently Dr. Cline started from scratch and carefully dissected the game with a mathematical precision not possible when the game was developed. The result is a game completely compatible with the golf courses and cards you currently own, while allowing you to play a modern golf bag and manage holes the way today’s pros do.

Golfers will drive the ball, hit fairways, and putt the way they do in real life. You can finally choose from the clubs the players really carry; no more 2-wood that today’s players never use. Instead, choose a 4-wood, 5-wood, and/or 1-iron—just like the pros of today! If you have always wanted wind, course conditions, lie conditions, and each golfer’s ability to “work the ball” to have the same influence on your course that they have in the real game, now they can!

Dr. Cline’s new Master Game elements are individually implemented, so you can add some of them, all of them, or none at all, and still achieve a level of golf accuracy never before possible. Combined with charts that finally are capable of reproducing the abilities of golfers of the 21st century, this fantastic new game will allow you to use the golf courses and golf cards you already own with accurate results, while integrating future cards and courses as well.

The new “boards” are actually a spiral-bound, 8½ x 11-inch booklet, printed on card stock for durability, that contains complete playing instructions and play charts for both the Basic and Master games. The game box also includes all the components you need to play: dice, shaker, ball markers, and score sheets designed for use with both the Basic and Master games, along with nine sample golfers and a sample golf hole.

APBA has announced that they plan on re-publishing APBA Golf in 2010.