Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005

Traditionally, the sport of international businessmen and retired detective inspectors, golf is a game for anyone's who has a few quid and as many spare hours. But while the clubhouse is the stuff of unglamorous suburban legend, golf is now also served by stylish fashion magazines like Golf Punk and Bogey: with photoshoots of semi-naked female caddies and articles on the best post-game cigars, there's barely a knitwear section in sight. And what about crazy golf? Windmills haven't been such fun since Don Quixote.

But computer game golf is the sport's ultimate mutation. People who would rather be beaten over the head with a three iron than traipse around an actual course can find that golf titles provide one of gaming's most agreeable - and often under-rated - pleasures. So let me rate this title straight away: a few hours with EA's first PSP golf game is a cracking use of your handheld and your time.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour is already a long-established champion on the console circuit; PSP gamers are thus getting a well-manicured and kink-free outing from the off. The PSP's ever-impressive graphical wizardry renders the various courses in satisfying detail, from trees and sand traps to the surrounding buildings and those seemingly magnetic water features, a very pleasant stage is set for some game escapism.

To knock your ball about the course you employ a pretty intuitive control system centred on the PSP's analogue stick. EA felt the need to reinvent the controls for the Nintendo DS version of Tiger Woods, but PSP gamers enjoy the original, pretty much perfected control method. Drawing down the stick pulls back the club, whipping it forward sends it flying down and into the ball, which then soars up the fairway.... if you do it right. It's all about timing - perfect execution is required for maximum power.

Once you're on the green you use the same system to sink the putt. Wind and sloping ground - together with the ego-teasing designs of the world famous courses implemented here - provide the main obstacles.

With a caddie selecting your clubs for you, Tiger Woods PGA Tour is simple enough to get going with - the essence of pick-up-and-pitch-and-putt. But the control method is deceptively flexible. You can tilt the analog stick to skew the shot left or right (often when you don't want to - that's the challenge) and use the shoulder buttons to inject some extra power, or to put spin on the ball. Later, as the courses get tougher and dropping shots becomes more costly, you'll need to over-ride your caddie at times. And rather than always simply whacking the ball hard, you'll need to chip, punch or even 'flop' the ball out of tricky situations. (You'll even discover what a flop shot actually entails!)

From such simple stuff a great game is made. All of the world's best golfers are included; you can challenge them in quick play, or undertake a mighty Legends Tour, which begins with a game against your old man and ends dozens of hours later with you besting Woods, Vijay Singh, and all the other pros. Winning gives you the money to buy better golf kit to pimp your game; from nattier shoes and clubs to a lucky hats and sure-handed gloves, these change your golfer's ability as well as his/her looks. On a purely superficial level you can also customise your golfer's physical appearance, with more than 30 differing attributes. Get it right and it really does look like you out there on the green. And this customisation is actually more useful on a portable console, since you can more easily show off your virtual self to the admiring gasps of your workmates.

Finally, there are several satisfying multiplayer modes. The head-to-head you'd expect, as well as a four-player party mode and the exotically named Bingo Bango Bongo face-off that we'll leave you to decode yourself. You can even wager in-game cash against your PSP-owning friends.

So far, so fabulous. However, just as Tiger himself eventually proved fallible, so his PSP incarnation isn't quite a hole-in-one.

The first major issue is hard to address, but must be mentioned: Tiger Woods is not an ideal title for gamers-on-the-go. The fine control required when playing your shots means hitting a speed bump or a shunt on a train can easily send you bogey-ing out of competition. It's a game best played while waiting for the bus, rather than on it - or better yet on the sofa. Harder to forgive are the long loading times. Getting started seems to take an age, and even waiting for the next hole can be annoying. Golf is a laid-back sport, but sitting about while your PSP catches up with you is hardly the stuff of easy relaxation that golf is famed for.

Still, Tiger Woods PGA Tour is hardly the only PSP game to suffer from slow loading, and better news is that the PSP's 'suspended animation' off-mode seems tailor-made for a golf game. You can drop out on the 14th hole and pop back hours later once your boss has headed out for the day. Bliss.

In fact, once Tiger Woods is in your PSP's UMD drive, it might stay there, a perfect compromise between bite-sized play and an over-arching challenge. Just remember that it's no excuse for buying a matching Pringles jumper. Tiger Woods PGA Tour is on sale now.