Major triumph: A first for AsiaA few hours back, as the familiar drone of night gave way to the first signs of morning, Asian golf woke up to a new dawn. Looking the Tiger in the eye all the way through, Yang Yong-eun scripted his finest golfing moment and in the process became the first golfer from the region to clinch a Major.
With the final round slated for a late-night start and promising to go on till the early hours of Monday morning, staying up was a risky proposition. It has been a year where the Majors have been plagued by anti-climatic finishes but the thought of delicious golf likely to be served up through the Minnesota-afternoon was too tempting to be given a pass.
It was a day when the putts dried up for Tiger. The familiar grimace enveloped his face and with each passing hole, the crouch lasted longer, became more painful. In sharp contrast, the 37-year-old Korean embraced the occasion, a smile never too far from his face, and played attacking golf all the way through, a trait unknown to those who walk the course with the world number one on a Sunday afternoon. Nothing described Yang’s game more perfectly than his approach on the 18th as he went straight for the pin, from a less-than-perfect spot, nearly 200 yards back, and the ball finished in birdie range. He promptly converted the putt and went on to punch the air in delight, the celebration, if anything, a touch muted keeping in mind the enormity of the achievement.
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One couldn’t help but feel sorry for Harrington as the Irishman, for the second week running, made love with the green-side water body on the par-3 8th, ran up a snowman and effectively buried his chances of a title defence. And this time around, we’ll have Tiger know, there was no John Paramour chasing Paddy down with a stick.
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Oh, and for all the chants that will greet Yang on his arrival back in Jeju Island, there is one man who will not be very thrilled about it. Jeev Milkha Singh may have had a tough week but there was still the knowledge of automatically qualifying into the International team for the Presidents Cup that would have kept him perky. That was until Mr Yang charged to the title and pushed Jeev out of the top-ten international players in the rankings list. The Indian will now have to hope for Greg Norman to look at him with a kind eye, much like in this picture from the Open-:
Image courtesy: www.asiantour.com
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International,
Majors,
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