Sport TV Golfe

Its nice of the Sport TV guys to dedicate a whole channel to the golfing nuts among us. When they presented the channel on Friday, they said that it would be free to Sport TV subscribers until the end of February. I wait to see what will happen then.

They were a little unlucky in their first day, with the Bob Hope Classic, bought from the Golf Channel, unplayable due to heavy rain in the American desert. American golf broadcasting is frustrating at the best of times, with an excruciating ratio of adverts to live action, so watching repeats of the little golf that had been possible was awful. On the other hand, the Abu Dhabi tournament made good watching, despite having to view it live and the highlights only a few hours later.

As it happens, I am quite happy to pay for 12 months of Sport TV subscription just to watch the four Major tournaments. They added to that last year with the FedEx Cup playoffs. I watch virtually no football, except sometimes the Champions' League matches and gave up on Formula 1 long ago. So we'll see if they expect me to pay more to watch non-stop golf, because that would be a little optimistic. If I can subscribe to only the golf, that will be the way to go.

Golfing on a Wii

Saying how wonderful the Wii games console is would be a post that's only two years overdue, though we only got one for Christmas, but I'll say it anyway. Despite the inferior quality of the graphics processing, the Wii, with its Sports games and innovative wireless game controllers, is great for getting us couch potatoes on our feet and leaping around.

And having gone and hit some golf balls today, after a sickly month of January, I find an interesting side effect. While playing Tiger Woods Golf 2004 on the PS2 was disastrous for my golf, the 2007 version where the Wii obliges me to practice a full, slow golf swing, appears to actually improve my game! Strangely, after playing the real sport, I can't hit a thing on the Wii...

Unfortunately, the console is right to tell us to take a break every so often. The realistic sports actions do tire muscles, despite the light weight of the controller, and seem to aggravate my injured shoulder almost as much as the real game: extra realism I'm not sure the game developers were aiming to simulate!