For the last five years, EA Sports has dominated the video game golf arena, not unlike the way its titular athlete, Tiger Woods, has ruled over the PGA Tour. With the Links series disappearing in 2004, EA has had a monopoly over the more realistic golf game. The lack of viable competition has made EA a little lazy in recent years with their golf game; the 2006 game for the Xbox 360 was absolutely despicable, and subsequent versions seem to have done little to bring the game back to the standard of quality it displayed earlier in the decade.

On the surface, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09’s new features sound inconsequential. Does one really think that advice from Tiger’s coach Hank Haney is really going to have a significant impact on the quality of the game? Dynamic skill adjustment is nice on paper, but has never really been put into practice effectively. Extensive club tuning will appeal to the most dedicated golfers, but would be lost on the majority of players. Yet these seemingly limp additions are actually pretty worthy and as a result, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 is a much better game than its predecessor.


This is partially owing to the fact that Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 was a mess of bugs, half baked additions and sloppy controls – this year’s game squashes many of those bugs, gives last year’s new features more meaning and tweaks the control system to be more forgiving while being more accurate. An on-screen meter now gives players real-time feedback on their swing – you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it. The meter will show you exactly how you moved the stick (if you use the analogue system – the old school three click system can be selected with a press of the right stick), and by monitoring your performance, you can learn to adjust your stick movement to allow for a more accurate hit. If you can’t learn to adjust your swing by conventional means, you can duck down to the pro shop to get your clubs tuned to account for the quirks in your natural movement. A driving range is available at the tuner screen, so you’ll be able to test your clubs as you decide what changes and tweaks need to be made.

Hank Haney’s involvement in the game is thrust in your face from the moment you load the disk. After you create your golfer the first thing he’ll do is run you through a few drills to assess your power, accuracy, short game and putting. You’ll be issued skill values based on your performances in these four areas. From then on, these values will be adjusted based on your performance at the end of a round – play well and you’ll get a boost, but poor play will see your stats drop. Hank will then give you an opportunity to boost your attributes with a few drills, where you’ll need to land the ball inside a circular target. These little exercises are routine, but in some circumstances, Hank will have you do something strange like hitting the ball into the trees. Once you’re into the tournaments, Hank will also provide basic advice on your shots.


The process of creating your golfer is largely unchanged from the 2008 game. EA’s Gamerface technology returns, allowing you to upload a copy of your ugly mug to your profile on the EA Sportsworld website, and downloading it into the game. It sounds pretty simple, but it quickly turns into a real ordeal – pictures are meant to be of a certain size, which EA never specifies, and the game has a tendency to reject your picture for no reason, or refuse to download it. Using the Vision camera is an easier option, but obviously not as readily accessible. Regardless of how you get your picture into the game, you’ve got to manually map it onto the player model by pointing out specific features on your face (so as to avoid unpleasant non-facial shots). After that, the game will spend about 10 minutes putting together your digital equivalent. In my case, the finished product ended up looking almost nothing like me, making the process largely pointless given the depth of facial construction options already present.

Once your golfer is complete, you can join the PGA Tour and compete in Tiger Challenges. Participation in the PGA Tour can cover the whole season, or be limited to the FedEx Cup (basically a golf leaderboard, with a playoff at the end of a season). Players can pick and choose which tournaments they participate in; tournaments vary greatly in both their prize pool and points allocated to the FedEx cup. Playing in every event is not necessary – one can get into the FedEx cup and make a ton of money just by playing in the big money tournaments. The Tiger Challenge is a collection of 10 series of challenges which culminate in a round of golf against a professional player. Challenges include getting a series of shots as close to the hole as possible, rounds of Bingo Bongo Bango and match play on specific types of holes. The more events you play, the better your golfer’s stats become, and the more money you make – which can be used to purchase equipment that will further increase your stats.


Outside of the PGA Tour, you can play as one of 18 male tour pros or ladies tour pros (or your custom golfer) in the usual selection of match play, stroke play, skins, battle golf and so on. The game features 16 courses from the PGA Tour, including Pebble Beach, TPC Sawgrass and St. Andrews. The selection is not quite as robust as that of the earlier PS2/Xbox/GC incarnations, but enough to provide an adequate level of variety. Two more courses are said to be added via the Marketplace in the coming months.

The online components of Tiger Woods have received a lot of attention. Players can now take their shots simultaneously rather than having to wait for each player to swing, greatly reducing the amount of time it takes to run through a series of holes. The Gamernet challenge system established in last year’s game is much better integrated. Gamernet challenges come under categories such as longest drive, closest to the pin, and so on. The challenges can normally be selected from their option on the main menu, but live challenges sometimes appear while you are playing. Each challenge is worth a certain amount of points (determined by the difficulty), which will affect your ranking on the global leaderboards.


Perhaps the biggest weakness of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 comes in its presentation. Even after four years on new hardware, the game still does not look as good as it should. Course environments, though expansive, lack vital details and often look pretty sloppy due to a certain rough look. The players, outside of Tiger Woods, also look a little disadvantaged on the detail and animation fronts. Match presentation is probably the worst aspect; they added two new commentators this year, who are completely disjointed in their calls, and couldn’t sound less interested if they tried. The same goes for Hank Haney, who sounds like he’s just sitting around waiting for his cheque to be written.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 gives golfers pretty much everything they need. The game vastly improves over the dire 2008 entry, quashing most of the bugs, and introducing useful new features like swing feedback and the dynamic skill system. While the game plays well, its presentation is insufferable; if EA can improve on that over the next 12 months, then the next Tiger Woods game will be one of the better sports games on the market.