Glitch in last year's game morphs into 'the Jesus Shot'

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NEW YORK -- When Levinator25 -- otherwise known as Bryan Levi -- posted a video on YouTube in which he exposed a glitch in the Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 08 video game, EA Sports president Peter Moore wasn't embarrassed. He didn't plot his revenge.

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Instead, he saw an opportunity to have some fun.

Levi's video, which he posted a year ago, displayed Woods -- well, the digital version of him in the game -- walking on water before hitting a shot that he holed. Levi called it the Jesus Shot. Click here to see Levi's video.

EA's response was to produce a video in which the real Tiger Woods walked on water before hitting a shot that he holed. The video then ended with this message for Levinator25: "It's not a glitch. He's just that good."

The video was posted on YouTube last week and has already received more than 1.5 million views -- almost a million more than Levi's original video. Click here to see EA Sports video.

"The accusation last year was that it was a glitch in the game," Moore said. "So we said to Tiger, 'Let's have some fun with this whole thing,' "

Fun, though, wasn't exactly the first word that raced through the mind of the game's lead producer, Michael Cayado.

"We try to replicate the sport as realistically as possible," Cayado said. "But to satisfy every since scenario and get every part of your game spot-on perfect is quite an impossible task. It was just one of those glitches.

"I was like, 'Oh, boy. OK. Our customers are starting to have fun with it.' I'm glad they're enjoying the game. They were taking a little jab at it. But we looked at it and said, 'All right, let's have our fun too.' I thought we had a brilliant response."

Moore said EA Sports shot its video before the U.S. Open in June, so there's no evidence of Tiger's knee problems. After his ball lands on a lily pond in the water, Tiger bends down at the edge of the pond, takes his shoes and socks off, rolls up his pants legs slightly, then dabs a toe in the water before stepping out to his ball.

He then thrusts his club down in the water to show the water's depth before hitting his shot. "The golf purists tell me that's a two-stroke penalty," Moore said, laughing, of Tiger testing the water with his club.

But Tiger's real Jesus Shot response wasn't the only fascinating video EA conjured up that day. They also came up with the idea of having Tiger try to hit a square peg in a round hole. So they gave him a Rubik's Cube and put him 25 feet away from a pin to see if he could hole the putt.

Due to time constraints with the video shoot, Tiger had just three attempts to make the putt. On the first attempt, he smashed the Rubik's Cube. But after getting a second attempt with a new Rubik's Cube ... well, let's just say Tiger doesn't make it a habit of three-putting. (Click here to see Rubik's Cube video.)

"That one was just an absolute fluke of nature," Moore said, "which, of course, Tiger is himself."