Tiger Blows 2 Shot Lead - Loses PGA Championship

For now, Jack Nicklaus' 18 major wins is still safe after Tiger Woods blew a 2-shot lead in the 2009 PGA Championship and lost to Y.E. Yang of South Korea. Yang became the first Asian male to win a major in the history of golf. The Korean women have been winning majors for years so I guess it was about time that one of the men stepped up to the plate. I don't think that Yang beat Tiger so much as Tiger really played lousy both yesterday and today.

This was the first time that Tiger lost a major championship after having the 54-hole lead. His putting over the last two days was very bad and today he was just awful. He kept over-reading the break in the greens and missed about 6 or 7 putts that he should have made and that in the past two weeks he did make. His win at the Buick Invitational and the WGC win at Firestone were awesome (although Padraig Harrington did screw up by triple bogeying the 16th hole).

I was very impressed with how Y.E. handled himself considering the magnitude of the tournament, since it would have been Tiger's 15th major win and would have put him that much closer to breaking Jack's record. Tiger looked tenative and played way too conservatively over the last 2 days. I think this loss was good for him because everyone thought he was automatically going to win since he held the lead after the first 3 days of the tournament. Tiger is not infallible and he just proved that he too can hit some lousy putts.

I've won a couple of tournaments in my day and it's because I putted well and was not tenative in my play. Tiger could learn a thing or two from me! I think he'll still tie or beat Jack's record but at age 33, things just became a little bit harder and more difficult for the world's best golfer. Maybe he is human after all!