Speaking prior to the 152nd Open Championship at Royal Troon, 15-time Major champion Tiger Woods has revealed that the most crushing defeat of his playing career came in the 2009 PGA Championship at Hazeltine National, where South Korea’s Y.E Yang came from two shots behind to take the title from him by three strokes.
“The hardest loss to get over was the Y.E. Yang loss because I had the lead. I had never lost a major championship while leading. That was the first,” Woods said.
“That took a little bit of time to get over that because I had made some pretty stupid mistakes in the middle part of the round. I made a huge rally at the end, but too late. I made too many mistakes in the middle. You can’t afford to make the mistakes that I made and expect to win tournaments. I know better than that.”
Woods had led by two through 54 holes at Hazeltine and despite struggling on the front nine of the final round, regained the lead through 11 holes on Sunday.
But Yang eagled the 14th to gain the upper hand and Tiger was unable to get back on terms, eventually bogeying the last two holes to finish three back of the South Korean.
Tiger was speaking of defeat in relation to Rory McIlroy’s narrow miss in the recent US Open at Pinehurst. Woods talked of how he had messaged the Northern Irishman a week after the event to offer his support.
“I just sent him a nice text. That was it. I waited a week before I sent it. I wanted to let it calm down,” said Woods. Just basically, as you know, I’m your friend. I know this is a difficult moment. “We’ve all been there as champions. We all lose. Unfortunately, it just happened, and the raw emotion of it, it’s still there, and it’s going to be there for, I’m sure, some time.”
And the 15-time Major winner also talked about the fact that even in his prime, he felt discomfort and pressure at certain moments.
“Lots of times. There’s a lot of times I felt discomfort. Yes, absolutely. Nervous, shaky, uncomfortable, yeah, all of it. That’s part of it. That’s why you love it. That’s why we practice,” he said. I work hard at it, and I’ve done it my entire life. I’ve worked hard to put myself there.”
Woods tees off on Thursday at 2.37pm, together with World No.1 Scottie Scheffler and fellow American Patrick Cantlay.
