Also don’t pay attention to the gallery laughing if in your first few round you’re hitting a 7-iron from 133 yards out. The first stop you should make is the club tuner, another excellent addition to the game. Take each club out for a spin, hit some shots and adjust attributes like loft, draw, fade and a few others. By the time you’ve tuned your driver, woods and irons your on course performance is going to greatly improve. When I first started I couldn’t get any distance or loft on my woods, going into the tuner allowed me to fix that and not only did that carry over on to the course but my attributes as well because better shots me attribute improvements.

Of course the Tiger Challenge is still here and you can compete against pros in match play events to unlock courses and equipment. You need a certain amount of skill points to play these match events though and you get those through the challenges. For anyone who has played in the past you’ll remember these, like winning three skins in the last five holes off of a guy in a kilt. Each challenge is worth different points but really have no logic about their difficulty as I found simple challenges more often awarded more points the harder ones.

EA has also managed to incorporate GamerNet into your usual play very nicely—for those who don’t know GamerNet is part of EA sports Web community. You accumulate points for bragging rights and I guess to pimp out your online avatar. The way it has been included into gameplay could be considered a metagame, as you occasionally see GamerNet challenges pop up, whether it be a longest drive or a close approach. While these challenges mean nothing for your virtual golfer’s career I must admit a certain satisfaction occurs when sticking an approach tighter then KewlDude979.

Another area you spend time in is the Pro Shop and everything you’re used to is still here. Buy new clothes, gloves, grips, shafts, hats and golf balls. There seem to be a lot of items that do nothing other than change your appearance and that goes for clubs, too. You need to unlock most of the items that give you a benefit like a +1 Power for a certain driver. Of course for those into the quick and dirty you can micro transact through Xbox Live or PSN and buy these locked items. Tiger comes with 16 courses again although some new ones and I’ve already seen two up for download.

Online play has a new feature and that is four player simultaneous play; it works really well with each golfer hitting his shots and nice visuals to tell you what is going on. I’m not sure the point of fast play because I enjoy the round with friends and a little trash talking but to each their own. Daily tournaments are also available although to be honest I couldn’t figure out what their purpose was besides getting more GamerNet points.

Tiger Woods 09 is a refined game that is making some noteworthy improvements but really not advancing the genre. For some that’s enough, but I’d rather see the putting overhauled completely, an even harder difficulty level and new courses each year with the ability to move older courses into the newer versions. If Rock Band can convert 80+ songs why can’t EA give us new courses each year with the ability to expand our library?

Let’s expand the Tour aspect of the game, make the tournaments feel alive. Instead of a static leader board screen while your loading the next hole, why not give cutaways to the leaders sinking a putt or blowing a shot. Make me feel I am part of the event taking place rather then just playing a golf game against a random number algorithm.

Are there enough improvements to warrant a purchase of 09 if you have 08? That’s hard for me to say. The dynamic ratings are fantastic, but with a majority of the courses being identical and the gameplay being almost identical it’s a tough sale. The game is a worthy purchase for someone a few years removed from the game, I just hope I don’t break anything the next time I miss an 18 inch putt because my eyes won’t let my virtual golfer pull the club back two feet.

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