Norton, MA—Throughout the 1960’s golf was the domain of a legendary trio—Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player. Each man exhibited at times top tier golf and no major event was ever far from their respective grasp. The recent vintage golf by Australian Jason Day has clearly shown that all of the previous talk about a “big two”—with the likes of Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth—is clearly premature.
At the end of ‘15 and for the first several months of ’16, it appeared the Northern Irishman McIlroy would be a solo act. The 26-year-old claimed the top spot in the world rankings with a clear vengeance, winning the final two majors in ‘15 and there was little in terms of meaningful competition that seemed prepared to enter the fray with him.
Things did begin to change this past April when American Spieth won The Masters in commanding fashion. Spieth showed a competitive fire and maturity that showed plenty of promise. The battle for number one would no longer be a monopoly of just one man.
Spieth’s winning the U.S. Open and nearly The Open Championship clearly pushed the previous attention focused on McIlroy to the sidelines. Complicating matters was McIlroy’s ill-advised soccer injury when playing with friends.
The race for supremacy entered a new chapter with the resolute focus of the 27-year-old Day. For the last few years Day had showed much promise—nearly winning various majors but failing in the final rounds in several of them. After this year’s Open Championship Day showed a far different side of his golf game—winning three of four starts beginning with the Canadian Open. His 20-under-par performance at Whistling Straits was a tour de force effort. And Day went even further, firing a 19-under-par total in winning The Barclays in NJ. Day concluded weekend play at Plainfield CC with a mind-boggling 63-62=125 total.
This week marks the 2nd event of the Fed-Ex Cup Playoffs. The top 100 players will battle for 70 spots to advance to the 3rd event in the greater Chicago area in two weeks.
