Bethesda, MD–
When Tiger Woods said that he would like to award the winning trophy to himself and donate the 1 million to his charity should he win the AT&T National today, instead he had to settle for presenting the trophy to K.J Choi, who for the second time in recent weeks has take the winning trophy from a golf legend.
Choi who felt the pressure early from Stuart Appleby had nothing to worry about but the 90 degree temperatures as he rolled onto the 18th green taking his second PGA Tournament of the season.
“One thing I can say this week’s trophy is a lot heavier than Jack’s trophy, if that means anything,” Choi said through an interpreter. “But just winning both events, all I can say is that I have a lot of respect for both players, and to be able to win in their tournaments is just — I can’t even express in words.”
“It’s just a gesture that came out naturally,” he said, “given the circumstances, the atmosphere, all the fans being there . . . I’m just shocked at myself being able to win Jack and Tiger’s tournament. I can’t express what this means to me. This tournament is just too big for me to absorb right now. I can say this week’s trophy is a lot heavier than Jack’s.”
Appleby who shot a 5-over 40 on his front side and never was a factor, making one final bogey at the 18th to fall into a three-way tie for third place with Pat Perez (67) and Jim Fuyrk (69) at 3-under 277.
While Choi was busy making noise collecting his hardware, others came to the tournament this weekend to pay attention to the man himself, Tiger Woods who finished the tournament tied for 6th at 2-under 70.
Woods donated all of his winnings $208,500 to the Tiger Woods Foundation and it seems that the tournament exceeded his expectations of putting a tournament together in just four months.
” I couldn’t ask for a better result, other than winning the tournament, but to have this many people turn out over the weekend is very impressive and I hope that in 2008 will be just as successful said,” Woods.
