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WPCNR View from the Clubhouse. By Bull Allen August 17, 2009: The headlines this morning out of windswept Chaska, Minnesota, disgust me, and once again distinguish the majority of the “professional” sports writing jury —the play writers out there – for their fickleness, savagery, and glee they show in attacking great players when they are down.
Lake Placid Club. 2009
They love doing that.
Tiger Woods is being described as “blowing” the PGA Championship to Y. E. Yang, and in one article, a writer called Woods a “choker.”
Please. No choker wins 14 majors before age 35. No choker comes from behind in pain on one bad leg to win the U.S. Open as he did last year at Torrey Pines.
Tiger Woods is the greatest golfer of all time.
His comebacks have been legendary.
He is the greatest competitor you will ever meet. He is a gentleman, despite his temper on the course (mostly directed at himself). He never loses his will to win, unlike the sports writing hacks who never write a guts column which might take them off the suck-up express. He fights to the last shot.
These are the same “reporters” who never reported steroid use, never report womanizing or hom0sexuality in the NFL by athletes and never had to make a play in a big spot, never have their writing dissected by fans on whether they should have used an adjective there or asked this question or that, and they never write a big story that will take them off the press box buffet.
Could we write something about Mr.Yang and the incredible round he shot yesterday? That, at age 37, he has put Asian golf on the map?
The vast majority of writers are not concentrating on Mr. Yang’s wind game. How was he able to master the howling gusts of Hazeltine? Was it his clubs? Let’s concentrate on why Yang won, and not dismiss the Yang triumph by saying Mr.Woods lost it.
Also, could we have the courtesy to tell everybody the first two names of Mr. Yang in reporting who won the PGA Championship. (For the record, The Times reported Tuesday his full name is Yong-eun Yang. Took them long enough, didn’t it?)
Mr. Yang won the PGA with a guts-ball shot on eighteen, when he fired away at the green giving it all he had, risking flying the green and the win, because he knew who he was playing. An iron into the green with the lead is going for the clincher, not playing it safe.
Yang won the way a big time golf tournament is always won. The Yang shot will take its place with Tom Watson’s chip-in on 18 at Pebble Beach, and Tiger’s own 12 foot putt for birdie to force a playoff at Torrey Pines.
Mr. Woods about a year after his catastrophic knee surgery has already won a couple of tournaments this year.. When Ben Hogan recovered from his auto accident in 1951, (far more serious, admittedly), it took him 3 years to recover. Woods, through his sheer force of will is still getting back his game.
Woods practices very hard. So does Mr. Yang. He plays to win every tournament. He essentially is still getting back his game. He had a day when nothing dropped for him, just as great pitchers sometimes find their stuff is not working for them.
To Mr. Woods’ credit, though severely disappointed in his own performance, he came out for the news conference, when I am sure he wanted to head straight to the airport. It was a horrible day for him.
The PGA Tour is nothing without Tiger Woods, and they need him more than ever. He is the standard. He is the only player on the tour, who playing on one leg last year, kept winning consistently. And, you know what, Woods never used his leg as an excuse for not winning last year. Unlike some super stars who make excuses all the time.
How consistent has The Tiger been in a game where you make so much money every week, you don’t have to win every week?
- Woods has won 70 official PGA Tour events, third all time behind Sam Snead and Jack Nicklaus.
- Woods has won 14 majors, second all time, behind Jack Nicklaus.
- Woods is 14-1 when going into the final round of a major with at least a share of the lead.
- Woods owns the lowest career scoring average and the most career earnings of any player in PGA Tour history.
- Woods is one of five players (along with Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, and Gary Player) to have won all four professional major championships in his career, known as the Career Grand Slam, and was the youngest to do so.[1]
- Woods is the only player to have won all four professional major championships in a row, accomplishing the feat in the 2000-2001 seasons. This feat became known as the “Tiger Slam”.
- Woods set the all-time record for most consecutive cuts made, with 142. The streak started in 1998, he set the record at the 2003 Tour Championship with 114 (passing Byron Nelson‘s previous record of 113) and extended this mark to 142 before it ended on May 13, 2005 at the EDS Byron Nelson Championship. Many consider this to be one of the most remarkable golf accomplishments of all time, given the margin by which he broke the old record (and against stronger fields in terms of depth than those in Nelson’s day) and given that during the streak, the next longest streak by any other player was usually only in the 10s or 20s.[2][3][4][5]
- Woods has won a record 30% (70 out of 234) of his professional starts on the PGA Tour
For any writer to say Tiger Woods chokes, well, that writer would be back covering curling if I were the editor.
This year, coming back from injury, Mr. Woods still works harder, and plays consistently better than any one else. Over the weekend we had a cluster of big names who could not shoot par – “good guys who have not won,” that the sportswriting fraternity loves to write up about as deserving of winning and wants sentimental favorites to win. They think Tiger is boring. Tiger wins because he works hard at his game, and at the same time is by all reports a model father.
He doesn’t carry illegal guns into night clubs. He doesn’t pick up strippers and take them back to his team hotel. He does not go on the Disabled List with a twinge in his thigh. He doesn’t do drugs. He carries himself with a maturity beyond his years and you’d be mad, too, if you did not meet your own standards set as high as Tiger sets his. He’s just too good. We love it when underdogs win. It is how the champions react to disappointment that set them apart.
What happened with those “every man” heroes at Hazeltine the sports writers love ? If Tiger was playing so badly, how come they were way down? If Tiger “choked,” those other good guys the sportswriters love, gagged big time.
Woods was in it, despite having a bad day, to the 272nd hole, and it took a Yang clincher miracle guts approach to beat him. Yang earned it.
Mr. Yang can look back on this day as the beginning of a path to greatness, should he choose to take it.
Woods is a proud person. A man who when he fails, does not like the taste of it and he takes personal responsibility for it and has the guts to apply himself to make himself better.
Next year, Mr. Woods will set himself a goal of winning all the majors – the Grand Slam – to make up for lost time in this, his comeback year—which would tie him with The Golden Bear – another great competitor who also did not like to lose often.
Mr. Woods should not attend news conferences in the future considering the vile stuff being written about his performance today by the “sporting press” who are anything but sporting.
But he will attend them..
Because he has class.
Class is something the national sportswriting contingent does not know anything about – because the majority of them do not have it.
Mr. Woods, though most likely will be practicing today.
