Much better gameplay than previous years, could use some polish in other areas.
On the bad side, the game seems to lack some polish. For example they added a fully 3d crowd that follows you around the course, but they don't really seem very real, nor interesting (almost like a crowd of robotic zombies). The crowd does have a couple animations when they get pelted by your ball (which actually affects your lie btw), but they make no effort to get out of the way when it's coming at them. Also there are tv towers and such lining the course, but there are no camera guys in them or banners on the towers like in real tournaments. It just doesn't feel exiting, like your in a tournament people care about (perhaps during some of the major tournaments this will change, but from what i've seen so far it's been very barren. The same is true of your competition, I remember in 2004 each opponent had a background story with an introduction and goofy animations between shots, but this year there are a few spartan comments between shots, but it's highly repetitive and there are only two voices, a male and female that are varied in pitch only so everyone seems kind of soulless if that makes any sense at all. Also, much of the customization is gone too. While the gameface thing is cool, it's still missing a lot. Back in 2004 you could add tattoos (and custom design them too), had an infinitely larger variety of junk to deck your dude out in etc. Maybe EA is holding out on this junk for an extra $5 download in the future, who knows. But for the most part the vast majority of the items you can buy are "serious" so the game looses some of it's fun with the ridiculous outfits you used to be able to put together. A few other annoyances here and there (like the menu structure and other little UI things can be annoying).
All in all EA has actually done a good job with this. Especially in the gamplay arena, which is by far the most important part. Hopefully we'll seem them continue to polish the game engine, and make it more "real," build some hype into the game like they do with their other sports titles, add some variety to the voices, animations, announcing, and costumes. Put some guys in the tv towers, and show some banners, TV vans and other little touches in the backgrounds to make it seem like were' in a real tournament.