K.J. Choi did all that was required of the winner at The Players Championship.
Not only did he hit the Green Island on the 17th hole at the TPC Sawgrass, he did three times in a day. With the tournament on the line, he obtained tumultuous under for by 80 feet on the final hole Sunday.
Despite all that Choi did win, the players Championship may be remembered as much for the way it has been lost.
David Toms, who reached a plugs 6 - iron and made a birdie from 18 feet on the hardest hole putt to force a playoff, missed a putt 3? feet by 17 to hand Choi, the biggest victory of his career.
"No excuses, no mark spike ball without marks, nothing," Toms said of his bogey three-putt on the first hole of sudden death playoff. "Maybe that much pressure." "But other that that, no there was no excuse."
On a hole designed to provide a large theatre - 17 Green Island - finishing fell flat.
The two players hit the green in the playoffs, and the advantage went Toms with a shot which is about 18 feet more far. Choi drags his putt birdie from long approximately 3 feet by the hole and Toms believed only to have a winner with his putt from 18 feet until he slipped by laminated cutting 3? feet by the Cup. In the grain, slightly upward, he is not hitting it solidly and missed.
Choi tapped in the putt and pumped his fist, but his heart felt for the 44-year-old Toms.
K.J. Choi tees off on the fifth hole during the final of the Players Championship golf tournament, Sunday, May 15, 2011 to Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) close"As a player of colleagues, I felt very sorry for him," Choi said. "Because I know how that feels." And I felt bad for him. ?
Choi had reason to rejoice for his own prowess. Winless on the PGA Tour for three years, he took the outright lead with a birdie from 10 feet 17 in the regulations, registered by September 18 with a putt of just next to 5 feet to close with a 2-70 and kept its constant nerves.
The Korea of the South lived in Jacksonville briefly when he arrived in America and practised once at the TPC Sawgrass, although he said his game wasn't good enough then to break by.
Now, Choi is a champion of The Players, won the biggest event on the PGA Tour.
"For me to turn as each day on this course this week, it's like a miracle, to be honest with you," Choi said.
Choi won for the eighth time in his PGA Tour career, harvested the largest scholarship $ 1.71 million in the golf tournament, moved to no. 15 in the world and all but assured itself a place in the Presidents Cup team.
Toms, winless in five years, had an easy time with positive. He was the head of 36 holes, finished the round third rain delay Sunday morning only one ball behind and spent some five hours with his name at the top of the ranking in the final series.
And his birdie on 18 - one of the only four birdies on the toughest hole at Sawgrass in the final round - he hit 6-iron to a clods of 18 feet and forced a playoff.
"It was the best putt I had an awful long time", said Toms.
Despite this, it is difficult to pass a pair of errors.
One came by-5 16, when he had a One-Shot forward on Choi and tried to reach the green in two. His approach found the water, and Toms wound up making bogey. It was the famous guy to lay the 18 by 4 at Atlanta Athletic Club when he won his lone major at the PGA Championship 10 years earlier.
TOMS was trying to put pressure on Choi.
"I thought that I could hit the shot," he said.
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