Yang shatters the Tiger mystique in PGA, at last!

CHASKA, Minn. — The scene seemed surreal, mostly because somehow we never expected to see it. Tiger Woods had been so great for so long that the idea of anyone — much less the late-blooming son of South Korean vegetable farmers — coming from behind to beat him when it really mattered bordered on preposterous. And it was once again proved that, Tiger is a human after all. err.

This really did come from nowhere, delivered by a relative nobody who refused to wilt like so many others had before him. The magnificent one was stunned, but so too was the massive gallery at Hazeltine National. Fans were there for a coronation only to find out someone had not only stolen the champagne but the cake, too.

Woods stood on the 18th green, staring intently at his golf ball, as if he were trying to read it for clues as to what went so terribly wrong. Y.E. Yang’s final putt made official what he already knew. Losing was something that happened to the other guy, not him, and he would still suffer the added indignity of having to putt out while Yang traded high-fives with his caddie.

He missed, as he had so many times on this long Minnesota day. No matter, because by now the secret was already out.

Tiger Woods is human after all.

Sure, we might have suspected. He even cried on the 18th green a few years back when he won a British Open after his father died.

But once the first tee was put in the ground and the first drive was hit, things changed. He never lost the relentless focus that drove him to do things other players couldn’t even imagine.

He never let anyone crack his intimidating facade.

Until now.

His remarkable streak of winning 14 major championships while leading going into the final round is over, undone by a balky putter and a player who not only dared to stand up to him but delivered a final blow so stunning it will live on in golf lore. A lot of players had the game to beat Woods on Sunday in a major, but Yang was the only one with the mental toughness to believe it could actually be done.

He may have been among the most improbable of challengers, but they are the kind who always seemed to give Woods the most trouble. Bob May nearly stole a PGA Championship from him in Kentucky, and Rocco Mediate had him beat on the California coast until Woods sank a miracle putt on the final hole at the U.S. Open last year, forcing a playoff which Woods won.

Like Yang, they played as though they had nothing to lose because they didn’t. The others did, and it was usually the fear of being humiliated by Woods that did them in.

Not any more. The red shirt on Sunday will now come with a target.

On a breezy day outside Minneapolis, the Tiger mystique was shattered.

Yang wasn’t about to claim credit for that, just as he wasn’t going to claim credit for making the biggest statement ever by an Asian player in major championship golf. But he did spend countless hours visualizing what he would do if he ever got the chance to play against Woods. And when he did, Woods seemed so surprised that he had no clue what to do about it.

Maybe that’s because on paper it was a complete mismatch.

Woods, raised from birth to be the best player ever, led after all three rounds and was so good on Sundays at majors that this one seemed like little more than a victory lap. Yang, who took up golf at age 19 only after tearing up his leg while trying to become a bodybuilder, was in qualifying school last year and had never sniffed the lead before at a major championship.

But it was Yang who kept calm even though he could barely sleep the night before because he was so excited by it all.

“I wasn’t that nervous, honestly, because it’s a game of golf,” he said through an interpreter. “It’s not like you’re in an octagon where you’re fighting against Tiger and he’s going to bite you or swing at you with his 9-iron. The worst I could do was just lose to Tiger.”

Woods had more to lose, though it would be hard to accuse him of choking his way to a 75. This is now officially a lost season for Woods in the majors he so covets, and now he has to live with the idea he couldn’t close one out — a major that he had all but won.

That’s a foreign concept for Woods, and one just as difficult to digest for his millions of fans. They, like the massive crowds at Hazeltine, expected him to come through until the bitter end because, well, he’s Tiger Woods and he always does.

He didn’t this time, and maybe that’s good. The streak is over and now he can get to work on starting a new one.

It’s going to be harder now but, for us, at least, it might become even more fun.

Because Tiger Woods is human after all.

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Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at tdahlberg(at)ap.org