SPORTS> Photo
|
SPORTS> Photo
|
|
'Lefty' shines in Shanghai golf tournament
(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-11-09 10:50
SHANGHAI: As Phil Mickelson battled to his second title in three years at the newly-upgraded WGC-HSBC Champions Sunday, he paused at the turn to hand a golf ball to a Chinese toddler as part of his project to spread the gospel of golf and attract a new generation of fans in the Middle Kingdom. Not that the world No 2, who is building a golf academy in the country and designing two courses, one in Tianjin called The World and another in Kunming, Yunnan province, was worried. "The galleries were much bigger than the previous two years," he said of the 12,375 crowd which turned up Sunday, up 25 percent from last year. "I'm very excited to see people in China getting excited about golf," said the American who won the tournament with a 17-under 271 and collected the lion's share of the US$7 million prizemoney.
As a 7,000-strong gallery thronged around the lead group of Mickelson, Tiger Woods and fellow American Nick Watney on a humid afternoon Sunday to see if Mickelson could retain his two-stroke lead on the fourth and final day, it was impossible to tell who was the crowd favorite. One Chinese man belted out "Wake up, Tiger!" after Woods teed off from the ninth to cap his morning meltdown with his first birdie of the day, one that surprised even himself and caused two local primary schoolers to sing out "marvelous" and "lovely" in English. Others sang for "Lefty". Unfortunately, by this point the world No 1 had already burnt his chances and was never going to get back into the game as he trailed Mickelson by six.
"Today was (a case of) anything that could go wrong went wrong for me," he said. "Just one of those days."
In fact, what started as the final round everybody wanted to see - Tiger vs "Lefty", the world's two best players, slugging it out for the first time in Asia to bag the biggest trophy in the region - quickly changed format to "Lefty" vs "The Big Easy" as South Africa's Ernie Els crept up the leaderboard. Els, who managed the only hole-in-one of the tournament on Friday, shot an nine-under 63 Sunday to set a course record at Sheshan International and finish one stroke off the lead. His awesome play looked destined to force a playoff before the bell tolled at No 18. Of the four Chinese mainland players who were in this year's HSBC Champions, only Liang Wenchong who, like Zhang Lianwei, has a European PGA title to his name, beat par.
|
||||||||
