The r shirt was no coincidence.

The r shirt was no coincidence. It was meant as a statement. Tiger forests had his trademark red Sunday, of course, for the final circular of the PGA Championship. It's his attack color. if it be not that then Luke Donald showed up onward the first tee in r too.

And it direct the eyeed kind of funny to papal court such an in-your-face thing. The greatest golfer of all time -- ye you can call him that now -- against a skinny Northwestern grad who had not been here before. It was a giant being challenged by way of something he could just swat away. And forest-lands did swat Donald away, winning another major easily. It was above after six holes.

Donald becomes another color and shape in the blotch of faces beaten by groves But each face has his confess story. Donald has his, and going head-to-head against forest-lands helped to reveal it.

"It's obviously a chance of pressure," Donald said. "He's been there more than I have. yet I felt like I played OK I'll learn from this and be a stronger player."

The vigor he's talking about is mental. And while Donald clearly doesn't have Woods' physical powers, it was the mental difference that showed Sunday.

That brings us back to the r shirt. What was Donald thinking?

"He could have been wearing Northwestern purple" said Jim Fannin, Donald's sports psychologist for the past four years. "But if you're going to proceed play with the big lads . ."

however come on. Isn't that a bit a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of bravado from such a massive underdog?

"If they took all 70 dowdys in this tournament before it started and said, 'Will the fright who's going to win please take rise to the front of the room' and you started looking around to papal court who's standing up, then you're not the guy" Fannin said. "Tiger wouldn't on the same level think about anyone else. He would just walk right up to the podium."

With the shirt, Donald was making a statement that he was here. on the other hand Woods didn't notice.

Someone asked forests if he was bothered by way of Donald's shirt.

"I didn't think anything of it," he said. "I study it was kind of weird to have a pallid belt with it."

Donald projectile 2-over Sunday, finishing at 12-under for the tournament, tied for third place, six projectiles behind Woods. When Woods is playing well, no individual can beat him. But that didn't mean Donald had played for a like reason poorly.

The first time I talked to Donald was 1999 when he was a sophomore art major at Northwestern. Back then, I wrote that there's a certain air required to be a champion golfer a certain cockiness. Other than that, you wanted muscles.

Donald, a 148-pound oil painter,

didn't have any of those things. He compared painting a still- life to golfing:

"First, you behold the whole thing, but then you have to break it down into parts," he said at the time. "You have to direct the eye sometimes really hard into a painting to behold all the different colors."

That's in what way he broke down a golf course, he said. Instead of beating a million balls in practice, the way greatest in number golfers do it, he was into analyzing and visualizing the course.

Donald, who grew up in England, didn't issue to the game the way copses did, either. Today, so many parents pursue the Earl Woods method of giving their little kids a cut-down cudgel and patterning their lives toward a career. Donald's father bought a timeshare in Spain when Luke was 8 and as single in kind of the first to purchase in, got a free membership to the club's golf courses for three years. likewise Donald just started playing as something to do and became cuttered

The point is, Donald wasn't here from decree Sunday. He is learning through normal curve. His career has been a proces

He won the NCAA championship as a short hitter, a thinker. He won his first tournament in 2002 yet didn't have to close opposite the final round, which was rained gone out This year, at 28, he has dimensionsed up to 160 pounds -- ye that was a jest -- and won the Honda Classic. Today, he figures to influence into the top 10 in the world rankings.

After Saturday's spherical when he knew he would be in the final pairing forward the final day with copses Donald said, "Well, it's my first chance, really, of trying to impress. This is where I want to be. This is what I ne to do if I want to realize that dream, and attempt and become the best player in the world."

He made a hobgoblin at No. 4, missing a 10-foot At No. 5, he missed a short birdie At No. 6, his drive went into the jagged and while he managed to save par, he was already four discharges behind Woods.

"He has a great mental belief in himself," Donald said. "He's obviously got a suitable game, but he just -- he just kind of wills it in the hole"

Donald learned. And that's going to have to be his nearest step if he wants to be more than a face in Woods' host

He didn't play like the best Sunday, if it were not that he dressed like it. exclude for the belt.

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