“When we urged him to go into farming, he would say: ‘I’m not going to live like my father"

There's plenty of great reporting the day after Y.E. Yang's improbable PGA win covering an array of topics.

Rich Lerner talks to Yang's agent Michael Yim and fleshes out quite a bit about the champion's life story, as well as the inevitable talk of cashing in.

I inquired about the size of the windfall that should come to Yang.

“It’s so unfortunate. He won at such a bad time for the economy. The value of his win is way up here,” Yim said, holding his hand as high as he could above his head. “But the market is down here,” and now he bent over and put a hand near the ground. “The challenge for me is going to be to bring that market up to meet this incredible win.”

Larry Dorman considers the ramifications of Yang's win, talking to Ty Votaw and noting this:

Yang, a 37-year-old from Seoul, South Korea, is an appealing character, with a back story tailored to those gauzy Olympic featurettes. A late bloomer from a modest background, Yang taught himself to play starting at age 19, pounding balls at the ubiquitous double-decked driving ranges that dot the landscape in Seoul.

That a golfer could spring from a background so unusual at a relatively advanced age and earn a spot on the PGA Tour is storybook enough. That he could win a regular tour event, as he did in the spring at the Honda Classic, is surprising. That he could do what he did on Sunday has taken surprise to another level of meaning.

James Corrigan writes:

After watching YE Yang lift the Wanamaker Trophy, Joe Steranka, the chief executive of the PGA of America, said: "Earlier this week, I said the addition of golf to the Olympics would be the single biggest thing to accelerate the growth of the game. I stand corrected..." Meanwhile, the Australian major-winner Geoff Ogilvy said: "It's hard for us here in the US to imagine the impact this will have."

Peter Dixon in The Times:

It is estimated that there are about 250 golf courses in Korea, with about three million players. The game is expensive to play and is considered to bestow social status. It is encouraging, however, that Yang and K. J. Choi, the first Korean to win on the PGA Tour in the US, come from humble backgrounds. There is every chance that they will have sparked a boom.

Karen Crouse says the Yang hype is nice, but...

It was, frankly, a little like hearing Alan Shepard lauded for being the first person to walk on the moon. The Neil Armstrong of golf, the Asian who aimed for the moon and reached it over a decade before Yang, was Se Ri Pak. In 1998, Pak, then a 20-year-old rookie on the L.P.G.A. Tour, won four tournaments, including two majors.

An unbylined AP report tells us about Yang's family and their reaction to the win, including quotes from his father who initially did not approve of Y.E.'s desire to play golf.

Yang’s father admits trying to pressure his son to join him in the fields.

“I had no idea what golf was — that’s why I was opposed to golf,” he told The Associated Press during an interview interrupted every few minutes by calls from well-wishers.

But Yang’s mother, Ko Hee-soon, said Yang was always determined to leave their tough life behind.

“When we urged him to go into farming, he would say: ‘I’m not going to live like my father,”’ she recalled, beaming. Ko said they would throw a party to celebrate his victory, which came shortly after sunrise Monday from half a world away in Chaska, Minnesota.

ESPNChicago.com shares this from caddy A.J. Montecinos.

Montecinos, 35, is a Chicago native who first worked with Yang, 37, in 2007. And despite the fact Yang, who is South Korean, doesn't speak fluent English, the pair is communicating very successfully.

"It's not very [difficult]," Montecinos said. "He understands a lot more than we give him credit for.

"He comes up to the ball and says, 'What thinking?' I tell him what I'm thinking, how far it is to the edgey, which is the front edge. He says, '7 ok?' I say, 'Yeah.' He says, 'Windy, where from?' I tell him, and we go."

Mark Reason brings up the delicate subject of Tiger's putting and wonders if perhaps inevitable age is creeping into his stroke.

People have been reluctant to believe this over the years, but Tiger is the greatest of all time because of his putting. He has been a genius on the green. In the final round of the PGA Woods took 33 putts. But it has been noticeable for a couple of years now that Tiger's putting has been ebbing and yesterday we could see the tidemark.

And I don't know how long it'll stay up, but if you want to relive the final hole, this video is posted on YouTube. Note how CBS sets up the dilemma facing Yang on the 18th fairway by going to a graphic on the majors this year. Really gave us a sense of how much the tree would come into play, the magnitude of the shot and the dynamic as the leaders faced the 72nd hole!