It's convenient to assume that the teams working on EA's major sports titles have the easiest jobs in the videogames industry. All they do each year is tinker about with a couple of features and then spend their remaining three hundred and sixty-four days playing air hockey and discussing how to make the wording on the game box suggest that the minor changes they've made are actually major advancements. However, such presumptions are misplaced, as the latest edition of Tiger Woods is aiming to prove.

While Tiger 09 does have some obvious additions - its five new courses (Florida's Bay Hill Club & Lodge, England's Wentworth Country Club, Shanghai's Sheshan International Golf Club, Nevada's Wolf Creek and South Africa's Gary Player Country Club) and four debuting golfers (Se Ri Pak, Nick Dougherty, Rory McIlroy and Darren Clarke) add a real global feel, it's the alterations behind the scenes that could make the most noticeable differences. Whereas last year's game had some very specific views on the way that golf should be played, this time developers EA Tiburon are taking steps to give the title enough flexibility to accommodate and improve every individual player, be they weekend hacker or PGA Tour veteran.

Your golfer's attributes have been reduced to four key components - power, accuracy, short game and putting - and you have a new golfing fairy godmother to watch over you in the form of Tiger's own coach, Hank Haney. At the beginning of the game Hank will rate your ability in each of the quartet of skills and, from this point forward, these will take on a dynamic nature, fluctuating with your performance. Split the fairway with a monster drive off the tee, for example, and your power rating will go up, but screw your next shot wide of the target and into a bunker and your accuracy will drop. It's a scheme that means each shot not only needs to be considered by itself, but also in terms of what results it may have on the next one and the one after that. After every round you play, Hank will be on hand to offer assistance with up to four custom drills for you to work on, one per attribute. Each of these drills will allow you to re-enact the weak shots you played during the last eighteen holes, with the reward of regaining the attribute points you dropped on offer if you succeed this time around.

To compliment the tuning of the attributes system, Tiger 09 also now gives you the ability to tune all of your clubs, except your putter. There are five different features of each driver, wood, iron and wedge for you to adjust; power, which you can raise at the cost of the size of your sweet spot; workability, which affects draws and fades; bias, which allows you to compensate for any problems with your swing, like a natural hook; and loft and spin, which are connected by the way increasing one reduces the other. The depth here allows you to make decisions like setting your clubs up to try and take maximum benefit from a quick course or having a driver in your bag that is ready to counter a venue that's prone to strong cross winds.

Visually, EA have taken the time this year to carry out special work on lighting, trees and water, to give each of the courses, including the classics such as Pebble Beach and St Andrews, it's own unique and appropriate appearance. With further improvements to the previous online options, including the option for golfers to take their shots simultaneously rather than in turn, Tiger is definitely shooting for the green - and this time round he may end up landing closer to the pin than he's ever been before.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 is due for release in the UK on Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PSP and PS2 on 29 August and in the U.S. on 26 August 2008.

Previewed by James Hamblin for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).