Tiger Woods' first foray onto the Xbox 360 was a prime example of style over substance. The courses looked great, but they numbered just six and there weren't many different ways to enjoy them. It also didn't play much differently than it did on the consoles--a disappointment for those who were expecting it to be more than just a prettier version of what they had been playing for years. EA Sports has addressed those issues by adding a new aiming system, doubling the number of courses, and adding a host of new play modes. There's still room for improvement, but Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 is a great golf game that plays as good as it looks.

Creating your own golfer is still one of the game's highlights.

There's certainly no shortage of ways to occupy yourself with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07. You can select from a number of different match and scoring modes, including stroke play, match play, skins, practice, stableford, alternate shot, best-ball, and four-ball. Battle golf, which is a twist on match play, is a new addition. The goal here is to win the most holes--as it always is in match play--but here you are able to remove a club from your opponent's bag after each hole you win. Needless to say, it's great fun to watch your rival tee off on a par five with a two-iron because you've taken all of his woods. Also new this year are bloodsome and greensome matches, both of which are team-based best-ball events. After you and your teammate hit your shots in greensome, you get to pick which ball you're going to play; in bloodsome, your opponent will choose which lie you'll use. One-ball is another new game, where you and your opponent share the same ball and alternate shots. The strategy in one-ball lies in trying to set your opponent up with difficult shots so that you're the one left with a makeable putt. If you're the one who drains the putt, you win the hole. Before each shot, a large blue ring that represents the target area appears on the course. This is the area in which your shot must land, or else it's a "betrayal," and you'll lose a turn. For example, on a par four you may be able to put the ball on the green with your second shot, but that will leave your opponent with a putt--and that's not good. You can, however, shoot the ball into a sand trap that surrounds the green, thereby forcing your opponent to be the one who has to put the ball on the green. This play mode is great for learning how to recover from bad shots, but it can be frustrating to play against the tenacious CPU and is best played against another person.

Right off the bat you'll notice the improved presentation. As soon as the game loads the camera sweeps around a beautiful driving range, finally zooming in on Tiger, who's juggling a ball with his club, a la the Nike commercial from a few years back. From here you can immediately hit the range to practice or jump into a quick game, but you're encouraged to immediately create a golfer so that you may embark on a career. Tiger's unrivaled character creation mode is back and much deeper than in 06. If realism's what you want, it's a breeze to create a male or female golfer in your spitting image, and you're limited only by your imagination when it comes to making zany, off-the-wall characters. You can also customize your player's swing as well as their reactions.

Your created golfer has unlimited potential, but at first they stink. It's up to you to head to the training course to help them develop their skills. Each of your golfer's attributes--power, power boost, ball striking, driving accuracy, putting, recovery, approach, and spin--can be improved by completing short minigames. You can face other golfers in a longest-drive or a putting contest, play quick competitive rounds of T-I-G-E-R or 21, and race the clock in minigames that test your mettle with long irons and your shot-recovery skills. The number of minigames is impressive, but many of them are little more than slight variations of each other. It's still tough to complain about, though, after last year's barren set of options. After completing a challenge your individual attributes are raised, based on what skills the challenge focused on, as well as your performance. In an effort to keep people from training their golfer over and over before venturing out on the course, your attributes are now capped based on your experience. You'll need to actually go out and win some matches before you're able to go any higher than 25 percent in any skill category. This does work as the developer intended, slowing your progression through the game, but it's frustrating to have a skill artificially held back when you've already earned the points to raise it. Should your skills need a little boost, you can always pick up some new clubs or some jewelry for a small skill bonus. New equipment and clothing can be purchased in the pro shop, which is easier to browse this year. If you're lazy and you've got the cash, you can skip all of the "hassle" of playing the game to earn skills, courses, and equipment. A quick trip to the Xbox Live Marketplace and a few hundred points is all it takes to get everything unlocked.

You're going to spend lots of time on the training course.

The team tour mode from the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and PC versions is nowhere to be found; it has been replaced by the Tiger challenge. Here you'll take your created golfer up against fictitious golfers like Pops Masterson and Big Mo, PGA professionals, and, eventually, Tiger himself. It's understandable that EA wanted to show off new animation for each golfer, but the inability to skip your opponents' turns makes rounds last far too long. However, you can skip the CPU's pre- and post-shot routines once they've started, and you're able to fast-forward their shots once they're in the air. If your interests lie in more-traditional golf, the PGA Tour season, which now uses the FedEx points system to rank players for the PGA's new playoff format, offers up more of a challenge than ever before. You'll first need to train your golfer and then win a few matches in the Tiger challenge, or your golfer won't have a prayer against the punishing schedule of four-day tournaments. You can simulate rounds of a tournament and you don't have to enter every event, but it really would have been nice to have the option of setting how long you'd like tournaments to last.

Should you grow tired of playing solo, you can head online for a greater challenge. There are daily tournaments, ranked and unranked rounds of stroke and match play, as well as alternate game modes, such as best ball, battle golf, three-hole golf, skins, one-ball, four-ball, and alternate shot. We had some difficulty getting into matches, and it was annoying to get booted all the way to the main menu after a round, but once we did get in a game everything ran smoothly and lag was never a problem. There's a small amount of ESPN integration, but it's limited to a ticker that runs across the bottom of the screen, short text news stories, and brief ESPN Radio SportsCenter updates every 20 minutes. NBA Live 07 on the Xbox 360 had the ability to stream ESPN video content while online, but that feature is not available here.