Woods Won the ‘Bay Hill’ Four Straight Times

The ‘Emperor of Golf’ Tiger Woods (USA) accomplished the great work of 4 consecutive championships in a single US PGA Tour tournament in 73 years.

Woods got his 37th win at the Bay Hill Invitational (4.5 million dollars in total prize money) held at the Bay Hill Golf Course (par 72) in Orlando, Florida on the 24th with the total of 19 under par, 269 strokes by reducing 4 more strokes in the final 4th round. The championship money is 810,000 dollars.

With that, Woods accomplished the great record of winning 4 strait championships in a single tournament in 73 years since Gean Sarazen won 4 strait Miami Open in 1930. Woods winning 4 straight championships is a single tournament is the third in the history of the US PGA Tour following Walter Hagen (1924 ~ 1927. the US PGA Championship) and Sarazen.

Woods, who defeated the 4 2nd place winners (8 under par, 280 strokes) including Brad Faxon (USA) by as many as 11 strokes, also replaced the previous record of win-by-the-largest-margin (9 strokes) set by Fred Couples (1992) in the 1992 tournament.

Woods, who missed the first five tournaments of the season including the season opener, went up to the 1st place in money ranking (2.8 million dollars) by winning 3 out of 4 tournaments, so he ran to the 5th consecutive Money King title.

Els, who was defeated badly by Woods at the 3rd round, committed 2 double bogies and

3 bogies and marked 5 over par, 77 strokes because of despondency of not overcoming Woods, and was pushed out to the tie for 38th place (288 strokes). The ‘Tank’ Choi Kyong-Joo finished the event as tie for the 31st place (1 under par, 287 strokes).

Young-Sik Ahn ysahn@donga.com