Ever since Tiger Woods became the youngest Masters champion in 1997, we have wondered.
We've wondered what it would take to defeat a man in a major championship who was 8-for-8 when leading after two rounds and 14-for-14 when leading after three.
We wondered who had the deep, dark secret. Who could provide the answer.
That moment finally came last Sunday at the PGA Championship and, lo and behold, the man who beat Woods doesn't speak English.
So our wonderment continues. A cloak of mystery remains on how to beat a man who seemed unbeatable when leading a major.
With his in-your-face, three-stroke victory over Woods at Hazeltine, Y.E. Yang of Korea became the first Asian to win a major championship on the PGA Tour.
Countless golfers have lost the lead at a major, just not Woods -- until Yang.
Do more major championships await Asian men?
Asians already have a strong presence on the LPGA and amateur circuits.
The LPGA Web site lists nearly 70 players of Asian decent.
There are 10 named Kim, six named Park, five named Lee, four named Choi and three named Oh and Kang.
There is Yi, Yim and Yoo, Hang, Hong and Hung, Lim, Lin and Lu, Jang and Jeong, Shin and Sinn.
None of this matters, of course.
A golf ball doesn't know what race you are, what gender you are, what age you are.
All a golf ball knows is where you make it go.
Is a wave of Asian talent on the cusp of entering the PGA Tour?
Some potential candidates competed this week at Quail Creek Country Club in the Scratch Players Championships, which ended Thursday.
Three Asians finished in the top seven, and all three were products of Stanford -- David Chung and Sihwan Kim tied for second and Andrew Yun tied for seventh. (SPC winner Dodge Kemmer of Wichita, Kan., just left Stanford.)
Chung, Kim and Yun were torn about what transpired last Sunday afternoon when Woods, who played at Stanford himself, lost to a Korean.
"It was mixed feelings," Yun admitted. "You knew it was going to happen sooner or later. Tiger wasn't going to be perfect forever. Of all the people you could think of, Y.E. was the one who stepped up and played great."
Kim said, "It just tells you Tiger is human and can be beat."
Yang's victory took some countrymen by surprised.
"Actually, I'm more of a fan of Tiger's," said Yeon-Jin Jeong of Busan, Korea, who got to return home for the first time in three months after completing Thursday's round tied for 26th.
Yang's victory has quickly sparked a more intense interest in golf throughout Asia.
"Golf is really famous in Korea, but right now they just don't have that caliber of player to make it to the PGA Tour," Kim said.
In time, it's expected more Asians will be talented enough to join the PGA Tour.
"I think it's on the verge of happening," Yun said. "It's gradually getting there. Anthony Kim has done well. I don't think it will be like the LPGA where you saw just handful after handful come in, but there will be more and more on the PGA Tour."
Jeong agreed and said, "A few of them are coming up who are really good."
What about that secret to beating Woods? What exactly did Yang say?
"He knows Tiger's game very well, and I think that helped," Jeong said. "He (Yang) said he always tried to imagine beating Tiger."
Heck, everyone imagines beating Tiger. Pulling it off is completely different, no matter what your place of origin.
"I'll bet he (Yang) was really nervous and he was under a lot of pressure, but he pulled it off," Sihwan Kim said. "He just hit a lot of clutch shots. He didn't flinch."
No flinching. Got it.
(Contact John Rohde at jrohde(at)opubco.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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