I’m not going to be shy about this: I love golf. I’ve already been out twice this year, and plan to spend as much time as possible this chasing a little white ball around the course. I took a short lesson early last summer, played all summer, and filled the fall and early spring with trips to the covered practice tees.

While golf is not a sport that most would immediately associate with gamers, it’s one that has developed into sort of a super-sized cottage industry in the gaming world. All by itself, Golden Tee has conquered basically every sports bar on the planet. And in just the first few months of the Wii’s existence, we’ve already seen the release of Super Swing Golf, and the inclusion of golf as part of the Wii Sports package. Now we have Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 for the Wii, and it’s easily the best of the bunch.

The heart of any release on the Wii is of course the games use of the motion sensing controls, so let’s start there. The easiest way to say it is that if the Wii remote had some more heft to it, or perhaps a less ridiculous looking attachment than the one available through Intec’s Action Pack, this would be the closest a game has come to allowing you to swing like you’re out on the course right out of the box.

The swing mechanism is simple: hold the B button and pull back. The length of your backswing and the speed of your swing through determine distance and power. In addition, PGA Tour 07 is the first of the golf games for the Wii to track the side to side motion of the wrists during the follow through. Super Swing Golf approximated this with its “overswing” mechanism (swing too fast and you hook or slice), and Wii Sports golf ignored it entirely. In PGA Tour 07, you will slice or hook shots based on your swing, so if you do it on the course, you’ll do it in the game. This means that to conquer the game, you’ll have to conquer your own swing first.

The interesting part about this feature is that while it definitely adds difficulty to the game, it also can act as a benefit to your golf game. I found that I was able to make the some of the same corrections while playing the game that I can out on the course. Slowing down the backswing, swinging through with more club speed, and snaping through the wrists really allows for straight, powerful shots.

The practice shot option is also key, because it allows you to sort of get a handle on each shot as you attempt it, and especially with a new user created golfer, the skills to make the shot you’re attempting may simply not be there, so practicing can definitely help you to determine what to expect.
When it comes to putting, you don’t just have to deal with the wing mechanic or your own personal swing foibles, but also the slope of the greens. On top of that, putting is somewhat less true to life than the other swings, as the developers seem to have gone with the idea that a firm putt is better than a soft one. It definitely takes a while to adjust to the putting in the game, and you’ll leave many a putt short until you get a feel for the process.