Cedar Rapids man swinging for Golden Tee Golf world championship

CEDAR RAPIDS — Marc Muklewicz is preparing to tee off against the best golfers in the world.

Video golfers, that is.

Muklewicz, 38, of Cedar Rapids, is heading to Las Vegas for the Golden Tee World Championship, to be held May 19-21. He's one of 64 semifinalists — decided by an average of player scores on five Golden Tee Golf courses over a three-month period — competing for a share of the $70,000 purse during the weekend competition.

'I can't really explain it, but it just makes sense to me,' Muklewicz said of his mastery of Golden Tee, an arcade game in which players use a trackball to determine the power, direction and curve of a shot. The game, created by Incredible Technologies, has been around since the late 1980s.

Muklewicz said he started playing when he got out of the Army in 1999.

'Friends from home were always going to the bars and I went along. That's where I picked up the game pretty quick and was beating everyone locally.'

An ad in the paper for a Golden Tee tournament at a racetrack in Chicago soon intrigued him.

'At the time, I knew nothing about the subculture of the game, but all my friends said I should go play because I was better than all of them. It turned out it was a tournament for the top 120 players from the U.S. and I didn't know what I was getting into.'

Even so, Muklewicz ended up making the cut into the top 32 players in that first tournament.

'After that I was hooked and started traveling around to compete.'

While Muklewicz currently works for Microsoft and plays Golden Tee in his spare time, he said playing the game and traveling to tournaments around the country can be lucrative. 'This is pretty competitive and when I'm not working full time I could easily make enough money to support myself.'

These days, Muklewicz may get in a few games after a day of work.

'I play on Camden Vending here in Cedar Rapids, at Union Station,' he said. 'Each game I am playing is against 50 other people and each contest you win you get a small amount of money back. On a good day, I can make $5 off a game, which I can knock out in about six minutes. I also play on two machines at once so I can double my time frame. It's a nice way to unwind at the end of the day.'

Heading to Las Vegas next week won't be Muklewicz's first trip to the World Championships. Last year, he went in ranked No. 1 and left with a fourth-place finish. After winning several other tournaments so far this year, including one in St. Louis and another in Minnesota, he' pretty confident heading into the Las Vegas competition and ready to take the top spot. If he prevails it could mean anywhere from $10,000 to $25,000 in prize money and his likeness would be turned into an avatar in Golden Tee's 2018 game update.

'I'm going into this expecting to win,' he said.

While the prize money is great, Muklewicz said that's not what keeps him playing.

'Golden Tee has 3 million players every year and the fact that on any given day I am the best at something that 3 million people do is pretty cool. Not many people can say that. I walked out of St. Louis winning that tournament and I was the best player in the world.'

Back here at home, fans of Muklewicz and the game itself can tune in to GoldenTee.tv where the world championship is to be streamed live.