On Sunday, golf history was made at the PGA Championship. Tiger Woods began the fourth round with a lead. This was a major championship and, at such events, Tiger Woods with a lead going into the final round is as close to a sure bet as anything in sports. He had never lost in a major golf tournament when he started the last round with a lead. Never.
That changed Sunday at Hazeltine National. Korea’s Y.E. Yang caught Tiger Woods and won the championship.
It was historic. It was seismic in the golf world. Sports journalists had to rewrite their copy or find their ‘Tiger-Woods-can-be-beaten’ drafts. On sportscasts and in the print media, there were countless stories about how Y.E. Yang was the first Asian born golfer to win a major.
It simply isn’t true.
Have these journalists and sportscasters forgotten the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA)? On the LPGA circuit, women from Asia have been a dominant contingent. The LPGA even tried to set English proficiency rules for its foreign players. Some feel that that proficiency standard was considered because of the number of Asian professionals. Asian women have won twelve major LPGA tournaments. Of these twelve winners, seven have been from South Korea. Yang becomes the eighth major winner from South Korea. He is the first Asian man to accomplish such a win. The women from that part of the planet have been winning major golf tournaments for years.
Catherine Forsythe
[Image by Getty Images via Daylife]
