Tiger Woods failed to extend his streak of consecutive years with at least one major victory after losing to a virtually unknown underdog today at the PGA Championship. Korean Yong-Eun Yang became the first Asian man to ever win a major and did so in dramatic fashion. I’ll let Yahoo! Sports’ Martin Rogers get to the details:

The gallery started to believe on 14, when Yang chipped in with a miraculous eagle to wrest the outright lead. But the inner confidence had lain within well before that, ever since the final-round pairings fated these two men toward a Sunday tandem.

“I had thought recently about playing with Tiger and I was surprised it came about so soon,” Yang said through an interpreter. “But I wanted this, I wanted this challenge. At times it could be intimidating because of what Tiger is capable of but I wanted to live it.”

A previous PGA Tour victory at the Honda Classic this year showed his mettle, but was no real preparation for rigors such as these. There were precious few signs of nerves, though.

The 17th was a blip, a poorly struck putt resulting in bogey as Woods uncharacteristically faltered alongside him. Coming down 18, though, it was Yang who looked stronger, rifling in a superb approach to effectively wrap up the title.

The golfing gods didn’t smile on their favorite son this day, instead deferring to a player ranked 110th in the world yet with the strength of a champion.

The celebration after his winning birdie putt on 18 was a joy to behold, as Yang seized his golf bag and hoisted it aloft like a weightlifter. A few minutes later he struck a similar pose again, this time with the Wanamaker Trophy.

“This might be my last win as a golfer,” Yang said. “But it sure is a great day. It means the world to me; it hasn’t sunk in yet but I know the significance of it.”

Does Yang’s victory today announce the start of a new torrent of Asian (or at least Korean) men’s golfing champions? Probably not. But it does certainly seem to be part of a growing trend of Asian countries’ (particularly the East Asian countries of South Korea, China, and Japan) ever-rising relevance in America’s most popular sports.

In any case, now isn’t the time to reflect on the long-term implications of Yang’s victory, but (well, at least for Koreans around the world) it’s an important day for just the one win. Yong-Eun Yang will be a household name starting Monday morning (which as of the writing of this post, it already is in Seoul) and for today at least in America, he’s the man that brought down Tiger.

To the surprise of very few, Tiger Woods is favored to win this year’s PGA Championship, which starts today and runs through the weekend. The PGA Championship is the fourth and final major of the year.

Woods is currently a 3/2 favorite to win and although he’s coming off a victory at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, Tiger has yet to win a major in 2009. In fact, the best he’s done so far was a sixth place finish at the Masters and a sixth place finish at the U.S. Open. (He missed the cut entirely at the British Open.)

Tiger missed last year’s PGA Championship, but did win the event in 2006 and 2007. He also has some momentum heading into Hazeltine National, winning the two last consecutive tournaments (Bridgestone and the Buick Open) that he has played in, which give him a total of five wins on the year.

Tiger’s main competition this weekend, at least based on the odds, appears to be Padraig Harrington (20/1), Phil Mickelson (22/1), Lee Westwood (28/1) and Hunter Mahan (30/1).

Here’s a TV schedule for this year’s PGA Championship:

Thursday, August 13: 2PM – 8PM on TNT
Friday, August 14: 2PM – 8PM on TNT
Saturday, August 15: 11AM – 2PM on TNT
Sunday, August 16: 11AM – 2PM ET on TNT
Sunday, August 16: 2PM – 7PM on CBS

To check the 2009 PGA Championship leaderboard, click here.

Related Content:

- Tiger Woods fined by PGA
- No fine for Tiger Woods

As it turns out, the report that surfaced yesterday about Tiger Woods being fined by the PGA Tour was erroneous. Tiger, although still peeved about what went down over the weekend at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, said that the PGA Tour has not fined him.

From the Washington Post:

“I’ve heard from the tour, and there’s no fine,” Woods said. “That was an erroneous report.”

Ty Votaw, a spokesman for the PGA Tour, said the original report of a fine was “inaccurate.” Votaw said Commissioner Tim Finchem had read and considered Woods’s remarks.

“There has been no process started with respect to any disciplinary action,” Votaw said by phone.

“The commissioner has reviewed the reports, and based on the reports that he read, Tiger’s comments related to the impact of the decision. He did not read them as an unreasonable attack or as being disparaging.”

We linked to a report by the Examiner yesterday about Woods being fined, although we’re not sure where the original report came from.

The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if the PGA received backlash for the supposed fine and decided to renege. But if Tiger is even saying that it was an erroneous report, then maybe there really was no fine to begin with.

Either way, it’s still a lame rule. You can’t have golfers worried about a game clock when they’re dealing with a tough shot in the rough. It takes away from the excitement of the tournament and it puts unnecessary pressure on the golfers.

Related Content:

- Tiger Woods fined by PGA

Tiger Woods has been fined by the PGA after criticizing officials Sunday following the 2009 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational. Tiger was critical of a rule that penalized competitor Padraig Harrington for taking too much time to hit from the rough and then off the green.

From the Examiner:

The wording of the rule is:

“It is an obligation of membership to refrain from comments to the news media that unreasonably attack or disparage tournaments, sponsors, fellow members, players or PGA Tour.”

Tiger’s words were reported as:

“Like I was telling him out there, ‘I’m sorry that John (the course official) got in the way of a great battle,’ because it was such a great battle for 16 holes,” Woods said. “We’re going at it, head-to-head, and unfortunately that happened. Paddy and I will definitely do it again.”

“I don’t think that Paddy would have hit the pitch shot that way if he was able to take his time, look at it, analyze it,” Woods said. “But he was on the clock, had to get up there quickly and hit it.”

What Tiger said could hardly be viewed as an unreasonable attack on the PGA Tour. He might have taken a pot shot at the course official, but that doesn’t seem worth a fine.

It’s amazing that the PGA Tour would fine Tiger for those comments, yet not after he lays down a barrage of curse words on national television following a bad shot. Seems kind of ridiculous if you ask me.

But what’s even more ridiculous is not allowing golfers to analyze their shots because the TV networks want to fit everything within a certain broadcast window. After all, this is golf – not football. Golfers should be allowed to approach their shots without being rushed in fear of breaking some pointless rule.

Update: The PGA is reporting that Tiger Woods has not been fined and that the originial report was erroneous.

This seems incredibly fake, but I’ve been assured that this was the same shot that aired live on CBS. If so, that’s rip-roaring good fun and just proves that even the greatest golfer in the world gets a little backed up from time to time after too much Chipotle hot sauce.

Ah, the modern man – just who and what is he? If he were rich, would he prefer a sports car or SUV? What is his favorite sporting event of the year? Does he fantasize about his girlfriend’s friend? (Yes please!)

AskMen.com put together a cool feature that delves into figuring out who the modern man is by polling over 50,000 of its readers with questions like the ones above.

The 2009 Great Male Survey rolls out over the next four weeks and discusses a series of poll questions ranging from sports, cars and entertainment to dating and lifestyle. To check out The 2009 Great Male Survey, click the link provided.

Here’s one of the sports questions that was asked (along with the results):

Q. Who is the hottest female associated with sports?
32% – Erin Andrews
28% – Maria Sharapova
17% – Danica Patrick
13% – Ana Ivanovic
10% – Natalie Gulbis

Some of the other sports questions include: What is your favorite sporting event of the year? Does gambling factor into your love of the NFL? Does fantasy football factor into your love for the NFL? Who is your top pick for your 2009-2010 NFL fantasy football team?

The results to the questions are pretty interesting and entertaining so be sure to check them out, along with the poll results for the questions in the other topics.

In one of his recent articles for ESPN.com, Rick Reilly took aim at Tiger Woods and his constant temper tantrums on the course.

The man is 33 years old, married, the father of two. He is paid nearly $100 million a year to be the representative for some monstrously huge companies, from Nike to Accenture. He is the world’s most famous and beloved athlete.

And yet he spent most of his two days at Turnberry last week doing the Turn and Bury. He’d hit a bad shot, turn and bury his club into the ground in a fit. It was two days of Tiger Tantrums — slamming his club, throwing his club and cursing his club. In front of a worldwide audience.

If there were no six-second delay, Tiger Woods would be the reason to invent it. Every network has been burned by having the on-course microphone open when he blocks one right into the cabbage and starts with the F-bombs. Once, at Doral, he unleashed a string of swear words at a photographer that would’ve made Artie Lange blush, and then snarled, “‘The next time a photographer shoots a [expletive] picture, I’m going to break his [expletive] neck!”

It’s disrespectful to the game, disrespectful to those he plays with and disrespectful to the great players who built the game before him. Ever remember Jack Nicklaus doing it? Arnold Palmer? When Tom Watson was getting guillotined in that playoff to Stewart Cink, did you see him so much as spit? Only one great player ever threw clubs as a pro — Bobby Jones — and he stopped in his 20s when he realized how spoiled he looked.

This isn’t new. Woods has been this way for years: swearing like a Hooters’ bouncer, trying to bury the bottom of his driver into the tee box, flipping his club end over end the second he realizes his shot is way offline.

I know what you’re saying. We see more Tiger tantrums because TV shows every single shot he hits. And I’m telling you: You’re wrong. He is one of the few on Tour who do it. And I keep wondering when PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem is going to have the cojones to publicly upbraid him for it.

I liked this piece by Reilly. Of course, I liked it better when Mark Kiszla of the Denver Post wrote about in early April after Tiger pissed and moaned through the Masters.

I wouldn’t go as far as to say that Reilly plagiarized (he definitely didn’t) or ripped off Kiszla because after all, the same sports topics are brought up ad nauseam on a daily basis and therefore there is bound to be some crossover. But read Kiszla’s piece, then Reilly’s, and then tell me there aren’t some obvious similarities.

Again, this isn’t to say that Reilly can’t touch on a subject that has already been talked about before (after all, we bloggers do it all the time). But we’ve seen this kind of lazy writing before from Reilly, most notably when he (essentially) reused a story he wrote for SI in 2003 as a “new” article for ESPN.com in May of this year. It drives me nuts how some believe that this guy is one of the most creative and innovative writers in the business and his work is often lacking.

Getting back to Tiger, would it be nice if he were a statue after hitting a bad shot? Yeah – it would be great if we didn’t have to watch him channel his inner Happy Gilmore every time he nailed one into the rough. But even though he’s a bit of a sore loser, Woods is an immense competitor and if guys like Reilly and Kiszla weren’t writing about his temper tantrums, they’d probably be criticizing him for not showing more fire and emotion when he plays.

At this point, I think Tiger is so good that some writers are going to try to find ways to criticize him any way they can. After all, how many times can you write about how amazing he is? Again, it would be nice if he showed a little more class on the course, but to say he’s disrespecting the game is a bit much. The guy is a model citizen (as Reilly points out) off the course so I’m going to give him a mulligan (corny pun phase initiated) for his club-throwing temper tantrums.