If there’s a sport that is ideally suited to the Wii’s motion-sensing controllers its golf. The ability to mimic a natural golf swing to whack a virtual golf ball takes video golf to a new level of immersion. Now that the reigning champ of video game golf has arrived on the Wii do we have a marriage made in heaven?

Let’s start by looking at the controls since that’s the Wii’s strong suit. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2007 is played entirely with the Wii remote. When it is time to make your shot you press the A button to bring up an aiming circle that shows you where the ball should land if hit well with the currently selected club. You can aim your shot by moving the circle so that it’s centered on where you’d like to hit the ball. As your golfer gains experience in the game you’ll be able to improve his or her accuracy which will shrink the target circle’s radius and let you more accurately aim your shots. It’s all pretty simple; just move the circle to where you’d like to hit the ball.

The swing itself is accomplished by swinging the Wii remote in an arc towards your TV (make sure that your remote’s strap is on tight!), mimicking the same motion that you’d use to swing a real club. You can push or draw the ball by twisting the remote while swinging, just as you would to open or close the face of a club to put spin on the ball. It works wonderfully and you’ll enjoy swinging away and then watching the ball fly down the course. Well, as long as you’re far enough out to swing with full power. When you need to shorten up the swing a bit things begin to get dicey. The biggest issue is that with the absence of a swing meter or any feedback on your swing’s power it is impossible to determine how much power you should be putting into a swing. When you’re getting close to the hole you’ll constantly overshoot everything or dink the ball a few feet forward. It can be pretty frustrating because you’ll never be quite sure as to what you’re doing wrong. Once you’re on the green things don’t improve all that much as putting is a total mystery. You’re never really sure as to how much power is needed for a putt or how to control that power.

If the control issues don’t bother you then you’ll find a lot of gameplay packed into Tiger Woods 07. The game is the most fun in its Tiger Challenge in which you create a rookie golfer and then take him or her through a series of golf events and challenges. As you play you’ll gain experience which can be used to improve different aspects of your golf game including power, accuracy, and recovery ability. Also adding to the fun are cash awards for winning events and making good shots that can be used to buy new clothing and equipment and trophies for particularly good shots. If you’d prefer not to go through the trouble of grooming a great golfer from scratch, you can play any of the game’s 18 courses as a pro including Tiger Woods, John Daly, and Vijay Singh.

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