If there was ever a sure thing in sports, it’s Tiger Woods on Sunday. That was until this past weekend’s PGA Championship. We could run through all the numbers: fairways hit, driving distance, or putts per round (Tiger would rather us not), but in this case one simple number stands out: zero. That’s the number of times golf’s most dominant player had relinquished his place atop the leaderboard after the fifty-four holes in a major championship.
South Korean Y.E. Yang, a thirty-eight year old who didn’t even take up the game of golf until age nineteen, played the role of spoiler Sunday at Hazeltine. It would be easy to say that Tiger lost more than Yang won. That simply wasn’t the case.
Anyone watching the same tournament as the rest of us this past weekend saw two men: one that wanted it more than anything else, but simply couldn’t make a putt to save his life (Woods), and one man who seemed content to linger among the pack, hitting amazing approach and chip shots at clutch moments (Yang). Such roles may have been reversed in past years, but Woods’ past record of greatness hung on his shoulders, while Yang simply hung loose.
Tiger’s defeat at Hazeltine isn’t the end of the world. It’s probably not even the end of an era. What it is, however, is the end of the gripping mental lock that Tiger Woods has held on all comers at the majors for over a decade. That said, Tiger is still Tiger, and this doesn't diminish the great year he's had thus far. Woods may not have won a major during 2009, but he’s won five tournaments to date.
Perhaps most importantly, Tiger’s bridesmaid performance on Sunday doesn’t take away from his fourteen majors. Once upon a time, there was someone who finished in the second spot an amazing nineteen times. Who was that? None other than Jack Nicklaus.
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