D6

By NEIL DAVIDSON
The Canadian Press

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Canadian Mike Weir was working on his "playoff beard" when developers from Electronic Arts' Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 caught up with him to capture his new in-game face.

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The Canadian Press

GONE GOLFING: Golfer Tiger Woods is shown above in a screengrab from Electronic Arts’ Tiger Woods video game.

As in real life, the facial hair didn't last long in the video game.

"He kind of wanted it to be more clean-cut," Travis Sailer, assistant designer on the game, said from Orlando. "That's what he normally goes with. So we actually worked with him and worked with our modellers in the game and got it so that we wiped away his beard a little bit for him."

Weir isn't the only golfer keeping an eye on the game. Woods, currently recovering from knee surgery, watches closely as well, according to Sailer.

"He's obviously very busy but it's still his name on the game," he said. "He cares about what goes into it. I think his biggest thing is he wants it to be as authentic as possible. We do get to talk to him. He's actually a pretty big gamer, as well. Growing up in his generation, he loves video games and plays a lot of, like, first-person shooters and stuff, too.

"We definitely get some input from him and value that a lot. And kind of bounce ideas off him and his people. It just helps make the game better."

While the game is filled with pros, Woods is the title's golden goose. And developers love to play him up.

For example, there was a glitch in the 2008 game that showed up as a golfer taking a shot while standing on water. It was dubbed the Jesus Shot in a video that appeared on YouTube. Woods and EA responded with their own video, in which Woods actually does walk on water to get to a ball on a lily and chips it into the hole. The Walk on Water video has got more than 2.27 million hits on YouTube.

Woods does another video in which he uses a putter to drain a Rubik's Cube and then throws his arms in delight after pointing at the hole and shouting, "Solved."

"The cool thing about the Rubik's Cube one is his reaction is so realistic because that was honestly his first try." Sailer said. "He did one practice just to kind of see what it would do, but that was his first take on camera. You could see him grinding over it because he's such a competitive person. He wants to get it right ... I thought his response was just so awesome because he was so genuinely thrilled that he did it."

That video has got more than a million YouTube hits.

Sailer, 26, is both a gamer and golfer. The Florida native sports a handicap of four or five and came to the Tiger Woods development from The Golf Channel, where he spent a little more than two years in production.

"I love golf, I got to meet a lot of players and got to go out to the events, seeing the courses," he said. "It was just a great experience and I've pulled on a lot of that when we're putting stuff in the game."

He joined EA after the Woods production moved from California to EA Tiburon in the Orlando area.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09, rated E for Everyone, is available for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 2 and 3, PSP and the Nintendo Wii.