91st PGA Championship Review
History
at Hazeltine
Historians will recount amateur Francis
Ouimet,
20, emerging from the caddie
shack to best English professionals Harry
Vardon and Ted Ray in a playoff to win the
1913 U.S. Open Championship at The
Country Club in Brookline, Mass. They
recall the unheralded Jack Fleck,
32, of
Davenport, Iowa, beating Ben Hogan in an
18-hole playoff (
69-72) at The Olympic
Club in San Francisco to seize the 1955
U.S. Open and deprive Hogan of a fifth U.S.
Open title.
In PGA Championship lore, there is
John Daly driving all night from Memphis
to Carmel, Ind., in time to eventually win
the 1991 PGA Championship by three
strokes as the ninth alternate without
benefit of a practice round at Crooked
Stick Golf Club. There is unheralded Bob
Tway miraculously holing his shot from a
greenside bunker on the 72nd hole to put
the finishing touches on a final-round
64 to
defeat shell-shocked Australian Greg
Norman for the 1986 Championship.
Then there is journeyman professional
Shaun Micheel besting a galaxy of stars at
Oak Hill in 2003 when he deposits his 7-
iron approach on the 72nd hole two inches
from the cup to engrave his name on the
coveted Wanamaker Trophy – another
victory for all the Davids of golf.
But Tiger Woods vs. Yong-Eun Yang?
The No.
1 player in the world vs. No.
110?
Tiger, he of
70 PGA Tour victories and
14 major championships, vs. Yang, the 37-
year-old son of a farmer who grew up on the
island of Jeju in South Korea and didn’t
launch his career in professional golf until
age
24 after a mandatory 18-month stint in
the Korean military? Woods, in fast pursuit
of Jack Nicklaus’ record
18 major
championships, against Yang, a two-time
Q-School survivor playing in only his
seventh major, a former weightlifter who
took a job picking up balls at a driving range
in South Korea and began teaching himself
the game at age
19?
Woods vs. Yang in a head-to-head match
over
18 holes at Hazeltine National Golf
Club in Chaska, Minn., with the 2009
PGA Championship, the season’s final
major of the year – Glory’s Last Shot – on
the line?
And was it mentioned that Woods
enters said final round at Hazeltine
National with a two-shot advantage over
Yang and owns an impeccable 14-0 record
when taking a 54-hole lead into the final
round of a major championship?
Who do you like in that matchup –
David (Yang) or Goliath (Woods)?
GOLF HISTORY IN GENERAL, AND THE PGA CHAMPIONSHIP IN particular, is peppered with David vs. Goliath dramas, up- sets of major magnitude that constantly remind us there is no such thing as a sure thing when two or more humans are
involved in the pursuit of birdies and bogeys with putter in hand and one
of the game’s grandest trophies at stake.
Y. E. Yang
became the first
Asian-born
male golfer to
win a major in
classic David
vs. Goliath
shootout with
Tiger Woods at
the 2009 PGA
Championship
By Roger Graves
MONTANA PRITCHARD/ THE PGA OF AMERICA
THE OFFICIAL PROGRAM OF THE 2010 PGA CHAMPIONSHIP 49
