The concept is simple enough. You have a small white ball which you must place into a cup which is embedded in the middle of a finely manicured lawn some several hundred metres away. Between you and that hole is any number of twists, turns, rough ground, bunkers of sand and possibly even bodies of water. You are not allowed to simply pick the ball up and walk it to the hole - you must hit it with any of the up to 14 clubs you brought with you for the purpose. These clubs range in design and purpose, depending on whether or not you are trying to hit the ball from a nice, well maintained surface (the fairway - where you would often use a "wood") or the longer grass to the sides of this fairway (the "rough", where you would use an "iron" or if it's really nasty, a "wedge") or even something trickier, like in a sand trap (again, the "wedge" range is useful here). Fortunately, even for beginners, this concept is easy to grasp within the game. Club selection is automatic and easy to understand and you are forced to go through a basic "shot selection" training sequence when you first start the game.

Now that we understand a little bit about what we are trying to achieve, let's go over the basics of the interface - as it is here that the whole thing could easily fall down: who cares how many courses there are if getting around them is a chore? Fortunately, that's not the case. The controls are very simple to get to grips with - within 2 holes, you'll know exactly what to push and when, it really doesn't take much time at all. To switch clubs, you use the left and right triggers. To zoom in to the predicted landing zone of your shot, based on your current club and direction selections, hold X. To change direction, use the D-pad. To take a shot, simply pull back on the analogue stick (or c-stick, depending on your preference) and then snap it forward. The best way to think about this is that you are literally controlling the swing of the club with your stick movement; only pull it back a little and you wont hit it very far. It's intuitive, easy to explain and allows maximum control of your shot - much much better than the old "push button here and here and here to swing" technique which is well past it's expiry date. Three cheers for the analogue stick!

If you want to, you can simply play your way around the courses (in single or multi player) with one of the stock players built into the game - Tiger Woods being the prime example. Their stats are high, the ability impressive - a good way to introduce people to the game. Once you have that out of the way, however, chances are good that you will want to play your own character - after all, you get to earn and unlock extra clubs / clothing / hair styles etc, why wouldn't you want to? Fortunately, Tiger Woods 2004 comes complete with one of the most detailed player creation screens ever seen in a videogame. There are, for example, some 3 pages (30+ options) for just the face / head details alone! With this power and flexibility, you can create some truly "stunning" variations... combine your funky jaw bones with a crazy hairstyle (dreadlocks, anyone?) and some of the cool accessories you can unlock (more on that in a bit) and you have someone truly spectacular to play through the game with. Wait until you see your freaky creation animated out there on the course, using the games stunning graphics engine... much hilarity is bound to ensue! Just be warned, if you are planning on playing multiplayer with a foursome of newbies, alot quite a bit of pre-game time to this process. With so many options and such an array of amusing creations at your fingertips, it will take about 15 minutes per player to create their custom avatar.

Once you have the physical manifestation of your character created, you get to the good stuff - actual golfing abilities. This is where you get to select your prowess in a number of golfing related statistics: how hard you can hit the ball, how accurate you are, your putting ability and many more. Each of these stats costs a certain amount of game money to buy and it's the decisions that you make at this time (and each time you revisit the screen, when upgrading your character) that will dictate the kind of game you will play. Big hitter? Impressive short game? You decide. You start with $25,000 and each stat gets more expensive the more points you already have in it. To get like Tiger, you will need to earn millions of dollars in your golf career.