CHASKA, MINN. — Finally, the great and immovable Sphinx of the professional sports world blinked. If that's putting too mythic a spin on the purely human endeavor of smacking and rolling a golf ball, forgive me.
Tiger Woods, who lost the PGA Championship by folding up in the same frustrated and overmatched manner that his opponents usually exhibit, has simply done so much so soon in this game that he has set the bar for his achievements beyond reach and beyond reason.
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He won the Masters by 12 shots in 1997, and he did it at the age of 21.
He held all four of golf's Grand Slam titles at once, starting with the U.S. Open of 2000 and running to the green-jacket ceremony at Augusta National the following year.
Most of all, Woods, 33, has established himself as the greatest closer ever to grab a final round by the throat and shake the drama out of it. When he headed to the first tee at Hazeltine National Golf Club on Sunday afternoon, Tiger's record when leading major championships with one round to play was 14-0.
For him to shoot a 75 here and lose to reigning Honda Classic champion Y.E. Yang, a South Korean whose appearance in the final pairing at a major was his first, Tiger had to take one giant step back from the notion that the bone-chilling intimidation of his skills must always freeze the competition in a setting like this, and yet another step back from the universally held assumption that he will surpass Jack Nicklaus' record of 18 major titles with relative ease.
This 2009 season has ended with Tiger being shut out on in the majors, the first time in five years that has happened, and with him holding a grand total of 14. No big deal, right, considering Tiger has won five other PGA Tour events this year, including two in a row leading up to this PGA Championship?
Tiger's never going to be judged like others, however. He doesn't want it that way. He wants there to be no doubt that golf has never had a greater champion, and doing that means passing the Golden Bear.
On Sunday, perhaps for the first time, the pressure that comes with such expectations seemed to become a factor in Tiger's play.
He played safe for two rounds on the weekend, waiting for his rivals to make mistakes and go away. When Yang wouldn't budge, Tiger's efforts to pull off another miracle shot or two or three were forced and frustrated and, ultimately, as surprising to him as they were to a worldwide television audience.
"The only way you're going to win major championships over the long haul," Tiger said later, as reporters struggled to make sense of what they had just seen, "is to give yourself as many chances as you possibly can.
"Nobody in the history of the game has done that better than Jack. He finished second 19 times. You have to give yourself enough chances to win them and I've done that. ... Unfortunately, today, I just didn't get it done."
With Tiger, it has happened far less frequently. Sunday's runner-up finish was his fifth in a major. First loser, that's the term he has used before, and it stings him like no other. The challenge for him isn't just to get close but to nail down every major opportunity with monstrous force.
Did you see Sunday how far he was from finding that special passing gear, the one that commonly leaves opponents in the breakdown lane? Again and again, Tiger stepped away from shots, confused by club selection in the blustery and changeable Minnesota winds. Unsure, too, it seemed, if there would be any great shots for him this day, no matter how hard he tried.
No. 17 is an example. By then Yang had taken the lead, breaking loose from the first-place tie they had shared on three previous occasions in the final round, and Tiger was running out of holes.
Needing to stick one close on the 182-yard par-3, he took dead aim at a pin tucked in the back of the green and near a lake. The iron shot he hit was so beautiful, so destined for success, that the CBS television crew chirped while the ball was in the air, "Oh, it's all over the hole."
When it landed, instead, in the thick rough over the back of the green, the crowd groaned and Tiger slumped in utter disbelief. The time had come for him to dominate, like always, and he disappointed.
"I made just a sweet swing," he said. "I couldn't ask for a better golf swing, but I just hit it right over the top of the flag."
The 18th hole was sweet for Yang alone, bringing him a birdie and a three-stroke win that Tiger couldn't have stopped with twice as many clubs in his bag, even though Yang fully expected Woods to chip in on the final hole.
"I was sort of praying it wouldn't go in," Yang said. "So was I intimidated, yeah, I guess I was a bit."
Logic says that the No. 1 player in the world can't win them all, and that he shouldn't win much at all coming off an eight-month rehab period following reconstructive knee surgery.
Since when, though, has logic applied to this man? Six majors have gone by now without a Tiger victory, including two he didn't play in at all. Ten is his longest career drought.
Either the 2009 season is just a ridiculous anomaly, with Angel Cabrera, Lucas Glover, Stewart Cink and Y.E. Yang bursting through in a quartet of unlikely major winners, or this is fresh evidence that the climb from 14 major titles to 18 is going to be harder for Tiger than anything that has come before.
Nicklaus had a few long stretches between majors, remember, including a period of 10 misses between his 14th and 15th titles. This game isn't easy.
Tiger, who still has two more majors than Jack did at a similar age, will go on trying to make it look that way, but Sunday afternoon at Hazeltine changed the rules.
The pressure is on Tiger now. Everybody else can just fire away, knowing like Yang did that it won't matter if he beats them in the majors, knowing that it matters more than ever to him that he absolutely, positively must.
Dave George writes for The Palm Beach Post. E-mail: dave(underscore)george(at)pbpost.com.
