Amy Yang earned an enthusiastic celebration at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship.
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SAMMAMISH, Wash. — Golf is usually a lonely recreation. Pro golfers is usually a solitary bunch. But on Sunday afternoon, as the closing tee time of the day made its closing stroll of the week up Sahalee Country Club‘s epic finishing hole, more than a dozen LPGA players gathered behind the green in a space between grandstands, whispering and laughing as they passed around bottles of water and prosecco. Runner-up Jin Young Ko was among them; so was former World No. 1 Lydia Ko, who’d completed greater than an hour earlier. Brooke Henderson stood simply behind the group; she and Lydia had battled down the stretch eight years in the past, the final time this main championship visited this course.
It’s unusual to see this many gamers assembled for any 72nd-hole celebration. But it’s additionally unusual to have a winner as fashionable as Amy Yang, who held a three-stroke lead as she proceeded up the final. Her second shot on the par-5 flew left, the place it collided with certainly one of Sahalee’s towering pines and really stayed up in its limbs earlier than ultimately, mercifully, falling to security in the tough beside the inexperienced.
And then got here a pop.
A Lim Kim had loosened her La Marca a bit of early; the cork flew onto the again of the 18th inexperienced and tumbled onto the fringe. She lined her mouth along with her hand, laughing at the blunder, after which dashed round the fringe of the inexperienced, the place she scooped up the cork to applause from the amphitheater crowd.
The celebration was on.
This week marked Yang’s seventy fifth main championship begin. The 34-year-old has been an LPGA professional for half her life and has had shut calls at majors all through; she entered the week with 21 top-10s and 12 top-fives. Last yr, she added a pair of T4s to her resume. She’d been shut sufficient to know she may win — but additionally shut sufficient to know the way robust it may very well be. During her tenure on tour, she’s develop into fashionable with gamers and caddies, and they also queued up behind the inexperienced as a result of they believed she deserved it and since they needed it for her, too, in addition to her caddie, Jan Meierling.
Throughout Sunday’s finale, doubt lurked at the fringe of her thoughts. She’d admitted earlier in the week that she’d began to wonder if she’d ever win a significant earlier than she retired. And she’d admitted her foremost motivation for nonetheless competing was to get her identify on a significant championship trophy. But that doubt was passed by the time she discovered the inexperienced in three. A chip and two putts later, the champagne-sprayers stormed the inexperienced, one after the subsequent, dousing Yang and Meierling. She resisted for a split-second after which raised her arms overhead, welcoming the second.
“I finally did it,” she’d say later. “And it’s amazing.”
YANG WASTED NO TIME constructing on her two-shot result in start the day. She was nervous as she performed No. 1, she mentioned, however channeled these nerves right into a near-perfect method shot on the par-4, establishing a two-footer for birdie to make the lead three.
It wouldn’t keep that simple. Playing companions Lauren Hartlage and Miyu Yamashita birdied No. 2 after which Yang bogeyed No. 3; instantly the lead was again to at least one. Major champions loomed not far behind; Jin Young Ko and Lilia Vu had been holding regular inside 4. A final-round brawl gave the impression to be in the offing.
Yang’s lead got here underneath additional menace at the par-3 fifth when Yamashita stuffed her tee shot to 12 ft and he or she hit a gust and got here up effectively wanting the placing floor. But then Yang offered the spotlight of the day, hitting an ideal chip that died in the left half of the gap for a birdie two. All week she’d had the finest brief recreation in the subject; this was a becoming strategy to emphasize that.
That was as shut as her opponents would get; Yamashita doubled the brutal eighth whereas Hartlage doubled 7 and eight whereas Yang fired her method to seven ft and made the putt for birdie. An hour later, Yang had added birdies at 11 and 13 whereas her closest opponents had continued to fall prey to Sahalee’s many pitfalls; her lead swelled to seven. The rout was on.
Yang did her finest to maintain issues fascinating down the stretch by lacking a three-footer for par at No. 16 and by discovering the water at No. 17 en path to double bogey. But she’d constructed such a bonus that not even these may damage. The successful margin didn’t matter; all that mattered was her new title: main champ.
After the spherical, Yang was requested how this modifications the means she sees her profession.
“I thought about this out on the golf course today, that golf is really just like, a fight against myself,” she mentioned. “I think I proved myself that I can compete and I can do this. Yeah, so was a good learning week.”
She was requested what she loves about golf and once more gave a poignant reply.
“The imperfection, this game,” she mentioned. “We do the best we can. Some days, golf feels so easy and feels so fun; other days, it feels like I want to retire very soon.”
On Saturday night time, when she was requested what a significant win would imply, her thoughts went to those that’d impressed her.
“I mean, I grew up watching so many great players in the past, and I saw them all winning major championships,” she mentioned. “I dreamed about playing out here because of them.”
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Asked for a selected participant who’d impressed her, she cited South Korean legend Seri Park, whose profession included 5 majors, together with three Women’s PGAs.
On Sunday, she was requested how actuality measured as much as her desires.
“I’m trying to process that right now,” she mentioned with a pause. And as she paused she glanced to her left at the trophy, and smiled.
“I see Seri’s name right there, 1998,” she mentioned.
Now Yang’s is there, too, a number of rows farther down. A number of years from now, maybe there will likely be one other golfer who provides her identify who watched Yang’s dominant Sunday at Sahalee. Perhaps a golfer who’d waited behind the inexperienced with glowing wine. Perhaps a younger golfer-in-training, a part of the group nonetheless ready outdoors the press tent as Yang completed her remarks. This had been, she mentioned, the finest crowd ever.
“It’s been the best fans. It’s been incredible all this week. Everyone was rooting for me. I want to go sign some autographs for them. I’d like to thank them,” she mentioned.
The feeling was mutual.
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