tiger woods 09 is pretty different than the other ones i think. you can't like choose which attributes to raise after each round, they do it automatically for you, depending on how you did in your previous round.

they also take points away from your skills if you don't have a good round. four skills are power, accuracy, short game, putting.

also, after each round, they take four shots (one from each of the above skills) that you had during the round and your coach (hank haney) has you hit the shot and then you can do a little challenge and try to hit shots like those. the better you do, the more your stats raise. it's like practice.

you can also go to the driving range and "tune" your clubs, so you can add draw, fade, height, spin.. you can customize every club, which is kind of cool.

i don't know about the difficulty of it, because i shot -24 the first tournament i did. it was just on the normal diffculty, the default..

edit: i guess the gameplay isn't that different h: