"The country-club softies who have made a habit of lying down for Woods have collectively done little farming and spent even less time guarding naval installations"
/Fun to see that both SI and Golf World's game stories touched on Y.E. Yang's toughness in fending off Tiger Woods.
Jim Moriarty for Golf World:
The son of a farmer and once a sergeant in the South Korean Army, Yang was the only contender who ever wore a uniform or carried a weapon, so you had to figure the son of an American Special Forces officer probably had a pretty good idea all along he wasn't playing Mary Poppins.
Alan Shipnuck for SI Golf Plus, writing about Yang:
A knee injury at 18 ended his heavy-duty weightlifting, and he found his way to a local driving range, where he giddily whacked balls into a net with a baseball grip. Self-taught with instructional videos, Yang was breaking par within three years but his development was slowed when he served almost two years of compulsory military service. (The country-club softies who have made a habit of lying down for Woods have collectively done little farming and spent even less time guarding naval installations.)
And in a non-game story, Tim Rosaforte fleshes out the Yang story. I enjoyed this most:
This time, Montecinos stuck as Yang's caddie. The Buick Invitational was their first tournament. After the AT&T National Pro-Am, Montecinos drove Yang in his Mitsubisi Gallant with 160,000 miles on the odometer from Pebble Beach to LAX in Los Angeles. Along the way, Yang asked Montecinos how much he owed on the clunker and how much on his house. When Montecinos told him $10,000 and $150,000, respectively, Yang made like he was doing two air pushups. "OK, Yang make two million, we pay," Yang said. After winning the Honda he told Montecinos, "See, I told you."
The car was taken care of after the Honda and the mortgage was handled at the PGA. "I don't see much of a barrier; he understands more than he gets credit for," Montecinos said. "I call him Mr. Yang. He calls me Mr. Bean because he says I remind him of the English comic who doesn't speak."