Getty Images
SPRINGFIELD, NJ — For Ruoning Yin, the calculus on the 18th green of the lower Baltusrol course was simple: Make a 10-footer and you’re a major champion. lose it? Get ready for the playoff. After 275 strikes, one strike was all that separated Yin from his rise to stardom.
Golf is rarely two-handed in its scores, but it does play well enough for the better part of four rounds and that kind of pressure shot is your reward.
Yin, a 20-year-old from Shanghai, China, surveyed the line from every angle. I spoke with her caddy. She waited for her play partners to be put out. Then she got to the ball and delivered a hit that changed her life.
“I just spoke to my can, probably like the left edge,” Yin said. “just me [hit] A heavy shot.”
When her ball fell, she released a fierce fist pump. It wasn’t Yin’s first victory, but it was the most important. With this title, Yin is now a two-time LPGA winner, the second major champion from China and on track to become the LPGA’s newest young star.
“It’s amazing,” Yin said. “It’s just unreal.”
Bird Yin in the fifth round is officially crowned golf’s newest grand champion. But it also reinforced a lesson from the entire final round: To win golf’s biggest and toughest events, you have to execute it under intense pressure.
After 4 p.m. local time, the KPMG leaderboard was busier than the New York City subway at rush hour.
Eleven players were within two throws of the lead. The usually nasty peltosrol was eased by a group of thunderstorms earlier in the afternoon and was ready to score. The chirping of birds echoed from all over the property. The volunteers who run the old-school scoreboards can hardly keep up. Finishing with back-to-back 5 par-5s, fans assumed more fireworks would be in store as the last few groups finished their runs.
but what In reality It happened just the opposite. With a headline in the balance, the bird dried up well.
Janet Lynn, who had been in complete control of her game all day, couldn’t capitalize on the 15th and burn the birdie edge. In the next tee box, she netted a left, tossing the ball into the water and dooming her title hopes; She signed four players under the age of 67 to finish in the two spots behind Yin, in a tie for third.
“The crash in the water is obviously not ideal, so it sucks,” Lin said.
Rookie phenom Rose Chang’s first major show as a professional suffered a similar fate. Scorning a booby charge in the final round (she also shot a 67, finishing three points, in a tie for eighth), her title hopes were dashed when she missed a round 3 16, then failed to birdie either a 17 or 18, both par-5s, partly thanks to a ball water at 18.
Naturally, every contestant in Sunday’s final round has felt the pressure before. But the stakes for major tournaments amplify the feeling. Winning at this stage is not easy – especially if you have never closed a trade before.
“It was definitely very stressful,” said Chang, who showed a rare outburst of emotion — pushing her driver into the grass — after she washed her tee one last time.
After Yin’s 72-hole birdie, the only player to catch her was Stephanie Middeau, who was playing the final pairing. Meadow, the 31-year-old from Northern Ireland, needed an eagle at the last point to force a playoff, and after her drive split the fairway, the 3 was still in play. But in a battle between stress and nerves, stress won out.
The meadow hit a low burner of worms in the pond in front of it. Ball bounced all the way through the hazard and finished on terra firma, but was unable to hole the next approach.
“Obviously that wasn’t the best shot of my career there,” said Mido. “I think I tried to swing a little too hard.”
Pressure can do funny things to your swing – even to the best players in the world.
When her competitors gave up, Runing Yin rose.
She played some of the best golf of the week on Saturday and Sunday, handing out just eight birdies and two bogeys over those two days. On Sunday, you didn’t make a single bogey. And, perhaps most impressively, she hit 37 (!) consecutive greens in regulation to close out the tournament.
“Her demeanor is amazing—everything is ahead of everyone else by a very great margin,” said John Lyman, Chariot Yin. “She is very special. She is wise beyond her years.”
This calm was evident in the final round. Despite hitting the first 12 greens, Yin only managed to muster one birdie in the first two-thirds of her putt. As she entered the final stretch of six holes, she was stuck in neutral, two shots behind Lynn’s lead. But Yin remained patient and stuck to her game plan.
I kept telling her, ‘Be patient. Lyman said. “I just tried to keep her positive. She was kind of struggling with her situation, so it was great to see that.”
On the thirteenth green day, Yin took the lid off the cup and poured it into a bowl for a bird. She matched the feat on the next hole to pull herself into a tie for the lead.
“I thought she was starting to feel a little bit like that,” Lehmann said.
Yin was steady over the next three holes, conceding each while the players before her struggled to find the hole. Arriving on the 18th green, Yin knew she needed a birdie to have a good chance of winning outright. All that got her in the way was the 10 feet between her ball and the hole.
“I kind of felt like I was going to do it,” Yin said. “It feels very strange.”
This feeling has a name. It’s called trust.