How did Tiger Woods lose the PGA yesterday? Probably conservative play on Saturday combined with poor putting on Sunday. for a while, it looked like he might achieve a golf rarity: Winning a tournament with ascending scores through four rounds.

Especially when the back nine turned into essentially a match play tournament. But Y.E. Yang (OK, how many Yin and Yang headlines today?) hung in there and played mainly steady, unspectacular golf. Except for the two most spectacular shots of the tournament, the eagle chip on 14, and the soon-to-be-historic approach shot on 18. Those two shots alone superceded Tiger's bladed wedge birdie on Saturday and Paddy Harrington's 300-yard fairway bunker shot to within 6 feet on Friday. Those shots will now fade into oblivion.

I'm a Tiger honk, so I was surprised by all of the choke talk and I expect that will drive him to win every tournament he enters the rest of his life. Not really, but I imagine that talk pisses him off. But golf is probably the only sport where we want the big guns to win. Even in an individual sport like tennis, the crowd loves it when the underdog comes through. In golf though, rarely does the underdog maintain his level of play after a surprise major win. Although Zach Johnson, after his Masters win, seems to hang around a lot of leaderboards, he doesn't win anything.

These are the best three lines I saw after the tournament:

Yang: "It's not like you're in an octagon where you're fighting against Tiger and he's going to bite you or swing at you with his 9-iron."

Since the tournament was held in Minnesota and Tiger lost, Norm Coleman was demanding a recount.

Y.E. Yang is Korean for Bob May. (You'll have to look up Bob May to get that one.)

Meal of Links

What does it take to truly disappear? With a subplot of a guy who tried to fake his death.

Hard to believe, but almost 10 years in and we are starting to see best-of-the-century lists. Pitchfork is looking at the Top 500 tracks since 2000. Boy, if you have some extra time, go through this list. There are some really good tunes I've liked that made it. Like #441, 407, 378, 342, 338, 261, 251, 244, 204 and 201 among a whole lot of others. Sign up for lala to hear them all, it's easy.

You can't watch "The Wire" with subtitles. I don't care what country you're in.

Exercise Yard

I still cannot comprehend that Usain Bolt ran 100 meters in less than 9.6 seconds. I have watched track for a long time and seen all of the greats, but that is unbelievable. Tyson Gay ran an American record in 9.71 and got smoked!

Bolt is so relaxed and goofing around before a race and Gay is so intense. But how must Gay feel. He has run faster than any man on the planet. Except for one. And he will never beat that one guy.

But Bolt may be the one guy who can spark some interest in track in a non-Olympic year. Even the intros of the contestants are starting to get creative, except for Gay, who remains all business. I don't know if Bolt can save track & field, but that race yesterday was freakish.

Bolt on the Blue Track



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1 Across: Sandler of "Funny People" (4 letters) Answer: Adam