Sunday, August 16, 2009

Ye Yang won the PGA Championship over Tiger Woods

Tiger woods’ magical streak, going 8for 8 winning majors when he led after 36 holes, had to become an end sometime.
It happened anyway, on the passed Sunday at the PGA Championship. The unheralded South Korean YE Yang became the person to lead to this end.
We expected that Woods’ magic would be broken someday; however, we never expect it would be Yang to do this.
There are both unlikely things here. For YE Yang winning a major championship and Tiger Woods losing one when he had a two-stroke lead entering the final round.
I don’t think the odds of the two both happened are good.
Going into Sunday, something like the 70-to-1 odds that Yang himself quoted, basing it on the career PGA Tour victory totals of Woods and himself.
So we can’t help to ask, did yang win the PGA Championship himself or Woods lose it? I am not quiet sure about it. Yang obviously had more belief in himself than his tongue-in-check odds-setting indicated.
Let’s take a look at Yang’s achievement in the career.
YE Yang is a South Korean professional golfer. He plays mainly on the Japan Golf tour, where his has won for tournaments. In 2006 he won the Korea Open, an Asian Tour event, and this victory gained him entry into the HSBC Champions Tournament in November 2006. He won the tournament, beating a strong field including Tiger Woods who was second, while they didn’t have a head-on confrontation. This victory earned him membership of the European Tour and moved him into the top forty of the Official World Golf Rankings. In 2008 he played on the PGA Tour after earning his card through qualifying school. He won his first event on the PGA Tour at the 2009 Honda Classic in his 46th career start in the United States.
Apart from his previous achievement, his performance is absolutely remarkable yesterday.
He is very calm in winning. He seemed playing in the cauldron of the final pairing with Woods.
Woods, on the other hand, didn't look loose. His biggest problem was that it was a day when he just couldn't seem to read the greens. He hit a number of putts that you could tell he felt he struck right, but they didn't break the way expected.
Beyond that, he just looked uncomfortable. On his approach shots from the fairway, he was constantly stepping away, wavering on club selection, tossing grass in the air, and more than once bending down to shoo bugs away from the vicinity of his ball.
You may call it just one of those days. But it was the first of those days Woods has ever experienced when leading a major.
With this win, Yang became the second Korean to win on the PGA Tour along with KJ.Choi.

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