Surprising 2nd place, `Excellent !` Choi Kyung-Joo

`Tank` Choi Kyung-Joo was not intimidated by the title of the last major competition of this season, keeping up with his own pace.

Prior to the championship, Choi projected that the key point of the game would be the precision, as well as the shot distance. Although the course length is rather long, the rough is so delicate that a minor mistake may lead to a big disaster.

Choi used his sand-wedge iron quite often, which was rather unusual. Since he thought that the tough `Bermuda rough` would prevent him from earning a par save even with an awkward posture in the rough, he rather chose the bunker. As Choi was confident with the sand save, he would drop several shots into bunkers and then managed his score comfortably.

Choi, who earned a birdie in the 1st hole, had a bogie in the 2nd hole, which was the only bogie that round. However, he earned a birdie in the 5th hole and then salvaged birdies in the bunkers of 9th and 12th holes respectively. Then, he added one more birdie in the 13th hole, which put his name with the winner candidates.

The match between two major champions, which many people was keen to watch, was finished with Duval`s win. In the 10th hole, Duval, who teed off with Tiger Woods (US), the champion of Masters, and Retief Goosen (South Africa), the US Open champion, joined the joint 2nd place due to 3 birdies in a row.

In contrast, Woods, who aims for three wins in a row, obtained 4 birdies, 2 double bogies and 3 bogies, which end up with 3 over par. Thus, he was pushed out to joint 100th place, which caused him to worry about the cutoff. Woods got a double bogie in the 15th hole (Par 3), where his chip shot was over the green and drowned into water. In the 3rd hole (Par 4), his second shot entered into a rough, and his 4 on and 2 putt led to two-shot loss, which was rather unusual for him. Once Woods is cut off from the list, the record of 73 consecutive participations into PGA tour may not progress.

Weight, whose name was on top of the leader-board on the first round, earned 6 birdies without any bogie, which is the record in the course. He emerged as a tornado for the competition. Although his best record was the champion in 1993 Camper Open, he may not be the winner in the end because there are 9 players in the 2nd place with 2 shot difference and 12 players in the 3rd place with 3 shot difference.

Since 55 golfers, which are more than one third of 150 participants, recorded under par in the smooth green, the course was evaluated as `something missing`.

Kim Jong-Seok kjs0123@donga.com