For Tiger Woods, Revenge is Best Served in the Presidents Cup

No, Tiger Woods didn’t have a good year by his lofty standards. He won the FedEx Cup, finished no worse than 11th in a stroke play event he played to its conclusion, put together a 68.8 scoring average, and won six PGA Tour events, but missing the cut at the British Open and finishing sixth, sixth, and second at the Masters, U.S. Open, and PGA Championship were what mattered, and surely left a sore taste in Tiger’s mouth.So, for a guy who once avenged a comment by Stephen Ames with a 9 and 8 blitzing, there was probably much to relish in today’s matchup with Y.E. Yang, his giant-killer at the PGA, in the Presidents Cup. Tiger savored it, ticking off five birdies and no bogeys in a 6 and 5 dispatching of Yang that sealed the Presidents Cup for the U.S. team. “He got me there, and I figured I could get him here,” Woods said. “It certainly was not exactly the same atmosphere, but then it still was an important point.”

The U.S. won 19½-14½ largely because of Woods’ 5-0-0 record, just the third five-win outing in the competition, but it was his destruction of Yang that clinched the win, and its brutality got golf observers tweeting.

Tiger may not have claimed any of the majors this year. But he took a huge chunk out of Yang, the only guy to overtake him and win on Sunday at a major. Cold comfort, maybe, but it still counts as revenge.

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