No voice chat unfortunately, you get to text chat in the online lobby before you start as well as in between holes. Everybody plays the hole at the same time, you see little ghosts of the other players while you are playing (you can hide them as well if they are distracting). If you finish the hole before the others, you watch the remaining players while they are on the green (you get a camera shot of the green), and the game also shows you what stroke each player is on and how far away they are from the pin while you are waiting for the party to all finish.
So going into the final course last night bcruise held a 10 stroke lead over rspencer and after the 1st round (we play 2 rounds on a course each week) rspencer had cut bcruise's lead to just 4 strokes. In the 2nd round around the 16th hole rspencer was within a couple strokes of the overall tournament lead, so it was really getting close. I think both rspencer and bcruise both bogey'ed on a late hole that could have been a turning point. Ruffy was only 6 strokes off the lead going into last night's finale but he had a bad first round which did him in, but he had a killer 2nd round that kept him within striking distance had there been one more round of golf in the tourney.