Wow!  That is the one word I said immediately following Y.E. Yang's win over Tiger Woods this past weekend at the PGA Championship.  I said all along it would come down to putting and so it did.
 
Tiger is the best putter on the tour and he has raised the percentages of putts made from six feet and in. The average on tour from six feet is 50% but the statistics show that Tiger has made 60 out of 61 putts from 10 feet and in.  That is staggering especially after the putts we saw him miss Sunday.
 
Why did he miss those putts?  Was it nerves?  If it was nerves, Tiger has never shown any nervousness around putting.  I believe his problem was in reading the greens.  The putts he missed just missed the edge of the hole or never broke the way he thought they were going to break.  The greens at that golf course are being redone next year for that very reason.
 
If you see dark and light green grass on the green, you will have two different putting surfaces.  Poanna grass gets on bent grass greens and makes the playing surface play to a different speed.  We saw all week players leave their putts short.  We are used to the playing surfaces being faster and more consistent.  I believe that is what brought Tiger to his knees.  He had 33 putts on Sunday.
 
So we saw a confident Yang and a frustrated Tiger on Sunday.  I still believe Tiger will win 5 more majors and bypass Jack Nicklaus' record of 18 major championship wins.  This was just not Tigers year for majors.  But he still has 5 wins under his belt in 2009.  Congrats to Y.E. Yang!

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