The final day had dawned, if anything, even better than the preceding ones. It looked like conditions were glorious for low-scoring golf, leaving open the possibility that someone might yet make a charge from four strokes back or even further.

The Fanling course has defended itself pretty well this week. Only two in five of the starting field were able to break par for a cut that fell at evens, and nobody has ripped it apart. It is one of the shortest courses on the tour, and it has been praised in turn by experienced veterans like Montgomerie, Daly, and Langer.

It is a composite course, made up of a selection of holes from the Club's two main 18-hole courses, and as such it provides some interesting criss-crosses and intersections. It also provokes the question why the Tour does not try more often to provide a challenge that forces the players to reflect, shape their shots, and work the ball, rather than simply inviting the young Samsons to let rip. But Sunday morning allowed the players to think that today might be a day for some serious target shooting.

The early starters breakfasted greedily on birdies, and the scoreboard was soon awash with red. The Bourdy/Mo/Sandelin group all birdied the 288 yard par-4 fourth. Behind them the Supupramai/Moe/Daly group all performed the same feat on the par-5 third; the Murukami/Minoza/Dixon group following them each picked up a stroke on the fourth too.

Big John Daly showed what was possible with a great run of form. Eight birdies and no bogeys took him from one-under to nine-under and almost in sight of the leaders by the fourteenth hole. It was a pity that he could make no more birdies over the last four holes, and that he had shot a 73 in the third round to take himself out of serious contention.

And what of the overnight leader, Oliver Wilson? It is hard to know how much damage this latest setback might do to his prospects. He has never looked for excuses for his losses, but at least in Shanghai two weeks ago he could point to the fact that he had all but held his own in the company of some of the very best golfers in the world. Here in Hong Kong he put himself in the driving seat, then allowed himself to be overtaken by some fine golfers, but men who are no better than he would aspire to be. Five-under 65s were good scores by Molinari and Mcilroy, but not exceptional in the conditions. Lin, the ultimate winner, needed to shoot only a three-under 67 to make the playoff. Wilson would have won with three-under.

Wilson lines up his short putt for birdie on 5. He missed, and things went steadily downhill from there.[China.org.cn]

Things could not have gone better for him at the start. He made a perfect birdie at the first, the only one of the leading half dozen to do so. Then he hit a great shot onto the par-3 second to give himself another opportunity. When he reached the green at fourteen-under, with a two-shot cushion over the rest of the field, if you had told him that sixteen-under would be enough to win it I imagine he would have bet his house that he would do it.

But Wilson missed his birdie putt, while Lin made his. Undaunted, Wilson set about repairing the damage on the par-5 third. With Singh in the group ahead making bogey, and Mcilroy missing a short putt for birdie, Wilson took the sensible option, with a three-wood off the tee, a lay-up, and a neat chip to three or four feet for another birdie chance.

But he missed this one too, and that is perhaps where the crucial damage was done. In the whole of the championship Wilson had never gone more than five holes without a birdie; now he could not buy one. He reeled off twelve pars in a row, and must have felt a deepening sense of doom as first Lin, then Molinari, then Mcilroy, all clawed their way to parity. In fact, when Wilson finally made birdie at the short par-5 13th, it was to draw level with Molinari and Lin on fifteen-under.

I believe it was this pressure that finally led to Wilson's part in the drama that unfolded over the closing holes. On 15, in the third from last group, Molinari overhit his tee shot into the ditch that crosses the fairway, an incredible mistake at that point. He dropped a shot to go to fourteen-under, and although he won it back on 17, that dropped shot was the difference between a playoff and outright victory.

In the following group Mcilroy hit a great approach to four or five feet, and made his birdie to join Wilson and Lin on fifteen-under. Wilson pushed his tee-shot into the fairway rough, then pulled his approach into the rough to the right of the green. He seemed to have saved the situation with a chip to the pin, then, from no more than three feet, he missed his par putt to fall a shot behind.

It was this that obliged him to try to force things on 16, which he bogeyed, and then again on 17, by which time he needed to finish birdie, birdie, to reach the playoff.

But as the advantage ebbed and flowed between these three men, Wilson, Mcilroy, and Molinari, one other was playing alongside them with steady confidence. That man was Lin wen-tang, and with the aid of his miraculous shot on the first hole of the playoff, he was the man who would go on to become the 2008 UBS Hong Kong Open Champion.

Four men who made the 50th Hong Kong Open an event to remember for the next fifty years: Winner Lin wen-tang, runners-up Mcilroy and Molnari, and fourteen-year old Jason Hak of Hong Kong, who finished as leading amateur. [China.org.cn]

(China.org.cn November 24, 2008)