Hi all.

My name is Carlos Barbosa and I'm a designer on Tiger Woods PGA TOUR® 09.  This is my second year working on this game and I'm happy to say that there are some exciting things happening.  This year our aim was to make the golfing experience more accessible without sacrificing depth.  This is my first blog here, so bare with me as I stumble through.

There was a big focus this year on improving the core experience.  The result was a suite of features that work together to change how you play the game.  These features are all wrapped up under one big umbrella we call the Performance Coach.  The Performance Coach includes a new attribute system, the Club Tuner, custom drills, and an actual coach, which happens to be Tiger Woods' personal coach, Hank Haney.   You'll meet Hank as soon as you start your career and he'll aid in the other features as well as walk you through setting your initial attributes.

The new attributes are really exciting.   There are now four attributes, each describing a different aspect of golf.  They are Power, Accuracy, Short Game and Putting.  While there are less attributes from last year, how they work make them incredibly deep.  These attributes are driven by how you play.  They are dynamic and fluctuate as you go based on your statistics.  So for example, your short game attribute will rise as you decrease your average distance to the pin.  This makes character progression dependent on how you play throughout all the game modes.  Improving your golfer can be as easy as just playing a round of golf on any course that you choose.

The attributes work with one another.  If you're a power hitter, you may sacrifice some accuracy and depend on your short game more.  Or your strength could be in putting, so as long as you get on the green you can get it in the cup. It's all about adjusting to your playing style.   Now, with that said, the attributes can go down as well if you have a bad day out there, and this is where the next feature comes in, the Custom Drills.

As you play your coach Hank will be taking notes.  Play a round and you may get up to four personalized drills, one for each of your attributes.  These drills will be recreations of shots you had trouble with on the course.  You can preview your original shots, which can be painful sometimes, and then play the drill in hopes of doing better and regaining the lost attributes.  You'll also get a chance to play a "Coach's Challenge" round whereby you try and beat a timed mini-game in order to earn even more skills. Doing these drills will get you a boost to your attributes that will give you an edge for your next round or help you recover from a bad one.

So this year it's about how you play the game with features designed around that idea.  The attributes make you think about each shot as there's always an impact and custom drills are tailored to specific areas that "you" are having trouble with.  The third piece to the puzzle is the Club Tuner which adds a whole new layer to how you play this year.  So big, in fact, that it will have to wait until my next blog.

Hopefully this gives you all a little preview of what to expect.  It's been a fun change and it makes a big difference knowing you have a direct impact on your player's performance.

-Carlos Barbosa | Designer