After tying the lead with Sung Ah Yim in first round action with a 64 and then taking a three-stroke lead on Saturday, Soo-Yun Kang certainly must have felt confident entering into the final round of the Safeway Classic. She sure looked at ease, smiling her way through eighteen holes and rarely missing a step. Her nerves only showed a bit halfway through her round and then again on the eighteenth as she missed her par putt and bogeyed in to win four strokes ahead of Jeong Jang.
Soo-Yun Kang is the fifth Korean to win on the LPGA Tour this year. With a wire-to-wire win after three full seasons playing golf among the best females on tour the 29-year old feels even more “Seoul-ful” with a 3-under 69 finish. Drenched in champagne by friends Birdie Kim and Gloria Park, Kang shrieked with delight. “I waited so long, for the past three years. I thought about it I guess like I was in a slump for three years and I worked really hard on it.”
Every golfer has endured a slump or two – days or weeks when your game just isn’t what it could be. For the pros, these slumps produce missed cuts (or T2s at majors if his name is Tiger Woods). For amateurs, these slumps produce lost bets, frustration, and – in some cases – humiliation. Many vow to quit the game during prolonged slumps (and a few even follow through).
Callaway Golf is enjoying a resurgent 2005 after a couple off-years. The company started the year by launching the Big Bertha 454 Titanium driver, which has been a success in the marketplace. With the golf season in full swing across the U.S., Callaway has released a new titanium-composite driver, the Big Bertha Fusion FT-3. Will the company’s new driver succeed where the composite-based C4 and ERC Fusion drivers faltered? The early word is a resounding “Yes.”
By the end of the 2003 PGA season Phil Mickelson was tired. Tired of facing the media and his own tortured soul over his lack of major championship victories. He was the poster child for underachievers and the unfortunate recipient of a clichéd label the media and masses had become accustomed to associating with all things Mickelson. He was “the best player to have never won a major.” He had been walking around with that pebble in his shoe for a long time and has finally shaken it out. Twice.
Well, that was one of the better PGA Championships that I’ve seen in a while. I wish I could have watched the end of it, but like many other people, I was stuck at work checking the updates on the web. It went down to the wire with an up and down by Lefty at the 18th.
The final major championship of the season is in the past, and it’s time for the golfers to push towards the season-ending Tour Championship in November. Usually the week after a major calls for weaker fields for the most part, but that won’t be the case this week. The World Golf Championship’s second event of the year is on tap and will be played at 
With only six events remaining on the official 2005 LPGA tour schedule, the Safeway Classic presented by Pepsi promises to be one of the highlights.
The PGA Championship has come and gone, but not without causing a stir in the golf world. The positive stories include Phil’s second major championship victory, Tiger’s weekend charge up the leaderboard, and Charles Howell III’s ace on the fourth hole Saturday. The latter story was my personal favorite, but the other two were pretty special as well. The good usually doesn’t come without the bad, however. Did anyone in the last few groups play anything that resembled good golf Sunday? The world’s best golfers were three-putting, duffing pitch shots, and hitting tee shots near the out-of-bounds markers.
If there were any lingering doubts that Phil Mickelson deserved his single major (the 2004 Masters), they have been dispelled. He kicked the “lucky” monkey off his back by winning the PGA Championship, his second major in two years. After Phil’s great year at the big four in ’04, 2005 was shaping up to be an average year at best. His best finish this year came at the Masters when he finished alone in 10th place.