Tiger takes second in his stride

THE NUMBERS have stacked up for Tiger Woods, just not the way he expected. Going into Sunday’s final round, he’d been 14 from 14 in closing out the deal as the leader in a major. Now, make that 14 from 15.

So you can expect Woods, who is without a major win in a season for the first time since 2004, to come out hungrier than ever next year in that quest to catch Jack Nicklaus’s haul of 18 career majors.

As Pádraig Harrington remarked of how this defeat would affect Woods, “If it has an effect on him, it will only inspire him.”

In fact, Woods will be going to back to some familiar hunting grounds for the 2010 majors: the Masters at Augusta, the US Open at Pebble Beach, the British Open at St Andrews and the USPGA at Whistling Straits.

Indeed, Woods - as he has done throughout his career - made a comparison with Nicklaus in accepting his second-place finish on the chin. In explaining his move to coach Hank Haney, Woods said: “One of the reasons why I changed my game with Hank was to be more consistent in big events. My career has certainly been much more consistent over the past five years. I’ve finished higher in major championships, if I don’t win. And I give myself more chances.

“That’s the only way you’re going to win major championships over the long haul . . . nobody in the history of the game has done better than Jack, (and he) finished second 19 times. You have to give yourself chances to win and I have done that.”

For his part, Korean YE Yang had prepared for taking on the world’s best by visualising such a scenario as occurred on Sunday at Hazeltine.

Yang, speaking through an interpreter, said: “I’ve sort of visualised this quite a few times playing against the best player, playing with him in the final round in a major championship. I always sort of dreamed about this. I’ve seen throughout Tiger’s career that a lot of players have folded probably on the last day when playing with him. So when I was at home, or probably at a tournament watching Tiger in the clubhouse, I’d usually try to visualise and try to bring up a mock strategy on how to win, if I ever played against Tiger.”

For Yang, the first Asian winner of a major, it was the fulfilment of a dream. Yang, who only started playing golf at 19, but who then had to serve a compulsory two years in the military before resuming his love of the game, claimed he was inspired by Nick Faldo and Jack Nicklaus.

Of that inspiration and how he learned the sport, Yang explained: “Faldo was probably in his prime winning Masters and the British Open and Jack Nicklaus, because even at an older age, he was playing top-flight golf . . . so a combination of admiration towards those two players.

“And also with a lot of videotapes that I’ve used. I didn’t have a coach when I started out. So I usually just watched videotapes and instructional tapes and started golf. That’s what really got me going.”

Yang’s victory has taken him from 110th in the world rankings to 34th. And that earns the 37-year-old a place in Greg Norman’s International side to take on the Americans in the Presidents Cup in San Francisco in October.

The top-10 non-Europeans in the world rankings qualified and Yang’s leap into ninth spot pushed South African Rory Sabbatini out of an automatic place.