The Hole Story by Craig DeVrieze

Today, we Quad-Citians mourn along with Ed Fiori.

What had been his — and the Quad-Cities’ — own personal slice of Tiger Woods history now has a co-owner.

Until Y.E. Yang outgunned the incompable Woods in Sunday’s final round of the PGA Championship in Chaska, Minn., Fiori’s 1996 Quad-City Classic victory at Oakwood Country Club held the distinction of being the only time Woods had taken a solo lead into a Sunday final round and not come out on top.

Yang’s rally from a shot behind to a three-shot win ended Woods’ run of 36 straight front-running successes, dating back to 1996

That is the seldom-mentioned aspect of Tiger’s incredible credentials as the best closer sports has known. We knew he was 47-for-50 when leading or tied entering a final round. We knew he had won 14 straight majors when tied or leading on Sunday morning.

But 36 straight with a lead of a stroke or more often went unremarked.

But it is remarkable. Consider: Since 1980, 54-hole leaders or co-leaders have won less than 50 percent of the tournaments staged on the PGA Tour.

When a 20-year-old Woods, then playing in his third event as a pro, stepped to the first tee at Oakwood Country Club on Sept. 15, 1996, Quad-Citians hoped their hometown would score an enduring place in history as the home to Woods’ first pro win.

Fiori burst that bubble by holding steady while Woods, the tourney’s leader since Friday afternoon, endured a quadruple bogey at the fourth hole and then four-putted the easy seventh.

(”It was quad city in Quad-City,” wrote then A.P. golf writer Ron Sirak, one of a dozen national golf writers who left the Presidents Cup in Washington, D.C.,that morning and flew tto the Q-C to chronicle history in the making.)

History didn’t happen, though. Steady Eddie “The Grip” Fiori’s closing 67 bested Woods’ by five shots that day. Tiger tied for a deflating fifth.

But who knew then that that ‘96 Sunday at Oakwood still would hold a place in Tiger’s personal history for 12-plus years.

It did. Until Sunday, when Y.E. Yang joined The Grip in the rare class of Tiger tamers.

Rest assured, that will remain a very exclusive club in the years to come.

Tags: Ed Fiori, Quad-City Classic, Tiger Woods, Y.E. Yang

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