"A lot of our golfers are going to want to do that," Cheng claims, which is why the company has built into its contracts the ability to offer discounted rates at the resorts.

It's not the only way they're hoping to bridge the gap between the real and virtual worlds—and to make money. The founders see three main revenue streams from the game—product placement within the game, ads on the site, and partnerships with television broadcasters and major golf events.

When it is released to the public late this summer, W.G.T. will allow players to create their own avatars that can wear (sponsored) clothing and use virtual versions of real (sponsored) golf equipment. Last May the company released a scaled-down version of the game, a "skills challenge" with a few holes from the Las Vegas Bali Hai Golf Course; for monthly competitions it has been offering real-world prizes from TaylorMade.

As it completes work on its slate of courses for this year (the game officially launches in late summer, with nine new holes being released every month afterward), it is focusing on creating partnerships around 2009 golf broadcasts so it can jointly sell advertising and share revenues. Its first deal comes in September, with the Muscular Dystrophy Association for the Jerry Lewis M.D.A. Golf Tournament.

"This would include those that don't necessarily attend or play real-world golf events, but would have a keen interest in the opportunities (and fun) offered by this platform," said Jerry Weinberg, president and C.E.O. of the M.D.A.

W.G.T. is pinning additional advertising hopes on a social-networking component, which lets players create online profiles, post blog entries and videos of shots, and send friends a news feed with information like scores or how to do better on a hole.

Relatively speaking, the cost of building this game is low. It takes roughly six months and $200,000 to make one World Golf Tour course simulation. (They've already completed four of the 10 licensed courses through investments from Series A lender Battery Ventures and Series B leader Panorama Capital.) A next console game, like Tiger Woods, can cost upward of $10 million for its initial creation, slightly less to develop sequels.

Michael Pachter, videogame analyst for Wedbush Morgan Securities, says E.A. sells an average of 2.5 million copies of the Tiger Woods golf game annually for PCs, consoles, and handheld game devices. He believes a free Flash-based PC game could attract 10 times the players, but won't be much of a threat to successful console games—at least not for several years.  

"I think that will work if they create a sticky product, and they appear to think it's sticky," he said. "I doubt that the game play and customization is as good as Tiger, but if it's free, I'm sure World Golf Tour is good enough."