Eurosport.yahoo.com's crack golf team travelled to the West Country to try out the latest craze to hit sticks and balls.

Peter McEvoy is one of life's high achievers. After a prolific amateur career, in which he represented Great Britain five times in the Walker Cup and won back-to-back Amateur Championships in 1977 and 1978, he was elected chairman of the R&A selection committee in 2002.

An OBE for services to golf followed, and a well-received autobiography, but this was not a man to slip quietly into the background and bathe in former glories.

In February 2007 McEvoy launched PowerPlay golf, a nine-hole version of the game complete with two flags on every hole - one in a straightforward location, the other placed as you might expect on the final day at a Major.

The concept was brilliantly simple. Using the familiar Stableford system, a player must pick three "PowerPlay" holes in the first eight and go for the harder pin. The potential reward is double points for net birdie or better.

On the ninth a further PowerPlay is available, at the risk of losing two points for a net bogey or worse. A matchplay version was also designed, where players "trump" opponents if they call a PowerPlay and match their score at a hole.

McEvoy described it as "Twenty20 cricket for golf", a faster, more exciting alternative for a time-starved generation. The buzz quickly grew, and in November last year David Kemp was crowned PowerPlay's first National Champion with a score of 34 points at Hampton Court Palace Golf Club in Surrey.

Ian Botham has been signed up for promotional duties, and a made-for-TV version, called PowerPlay Shootout, debuted last month in Oxfordshire and attracted a field including former Ryder Cup player Steven Richardson and French Open winner Malcolm Mackenzie.

All of which made a trip to visit The Kendleshire GC in Bristol for a first-hand experience of PowerPlay golf nigh-on essential. And so, under glorious sunshine, came the litmus test.

The first thing you notice is a heightened awareness of your limitations. To call a PowerPlay is the equivalent of raising the stakes in poker, but the bluffing option is not in your armoury. You have to make the decision before you tee off, and if your bold bid is followed by a woeful shank you don't look very clever.

Then again, for the first eight holes you've nothing to lose, which brings out the fearless birdie-stalking golfer within. As a streaky driver, but a decent iron player, I called my powerplays on two par-threes and the shortest par-four. Each time the pin was placed in the most inaccessible location imaginable. But then that's the idea.

To add to the drama, players going for the PowerPlay flag are always last to putt out. When that player is you, a sense of cavalier bravado is inescapable. While your peers have taken life's easy street, you're about to conquer the road less travelled. Even the most conservative weekend sluggers will experience three holes as a maverick.

At the ninth a difficult decision awaits. Take the PowerPlay and you risk losing points if it all goes horribly wrong. Play safe and you risk looking like a scared part-timer. Either way, the tactically astute will be rewarded.

With our nine complete, there was time to reflect on an intriguing experience. An otherwise casual nine holes had been transformed into a tactical battle which ebbed and flowed all the way to the last. I might have lost, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Will Tidey / Eurosport