A Blogger's Remorse

Picking Zach Johnson to win the Match-Play has fallen to second place in the highly-competitive race for the stupidest move by your humble blogger this weekend.  I came home from a delightful day of skiing to find Jason Day 3-up on Victor Dubuisson in their finals match.  I quickly concluded that they had, in fact, won their morning semi-finals match and that I had a great chance of actually getting on right.

As I checked in with the bride and threw in a load of laundry, Victor picked up a hole, but failed to convert slight advantages on the next two holes.  When Day made his testy four-footer on No. 16 to maintain his two-up lead with two to play, it was over.  So I decided that the only rationale strategy was to succumb to Morpheus for a desperately needed nap.  Good thing I didn't miss anything...

CBS certainly didn't get the players they wanted for their weekend coverage, but they did get riveting drama and great shot-making.  And save one blogger worn out from skiing, I can't imagine too many folks turned off the telly as the events were unfolding.  Shall we go to the videotape?  Here's the Tours highlight package:

The highlight package above captures Victor's amazing back-to-back saves from the desert scrub, but do watch the video below of the second one from their 20th hole just for Jason's reaction... that smile will endear him to many golf fans.

Day had this to say about his opponent after the dust had settled:

"Vic, man, he has a lot of guts," Day said. "He has a great short game - straight out of the cactus twice. For a 23-year-old kid, he's got a lot of game. We're going to see a lot of him for years to come."Just remember, you heard it here first as I've been touting Dubuisson since early February.  

And of the victor (intentional lower case?  Day is one of those players that we've always had difficulty assessing.  He burst onto the scene and didn't exactly make the best first impression.  As a brash 20-year old he had this to share with us:

"My goal is to be the No. 1 golfer in the world and I want to chase Tiger," he said in 2007. "All I want to do is work hard, win tournaments and catch up with Tiger. ... I just want to work really hard and take him down."

Obviously he hadn't done enough at that point to personally call out the Striped One.  And when you challenge the Gods, they'll make you pay (especially in this fickle game).  Since then he's shown us great flashes of talent, with 6 top-ten finishes in his 13 starts in majors, most notably a second place finish to Charl Schwartzel at the dramatic 2011 Masters.  And I'll note for the record that not only did I pick him amongst the four semi-finalists yesterday morning, but my Golfweek bracket had him as the losing finalist.  Since you'll ask, I finished No. 247 in the Golfweek contest.  pretty respectable considering on Thursday afternoon I was in 1,680th place (I couldn't find anything that would tell me how many entries they had).  

But, as Bob Harig reminds us in this item,  for all that, this is only his second PGA Tour victory, the first being the 2010 Colnial.  The win has catapulted Day up the world rankings, leading to this question from Harig:

But the bottom line is: Has anyone risen to No. 4 in the world with as few victories?

Awfully good question.  But Day will be a popular pick when it comes time to embarrass ourselves with Masters picks.  

Commissioner Ratched Lepetomane Dolce Gabana didn't add anything meaningful to our understanding of the future of this event at his presser, though Shackelford was quite taken with the stylish new readers.  

The Commish yucking it up.  He'll be here all week, folks.

Per Rex Hoggard's account, this is about all the new data he shared:

Finchem said that among those potential sponsors is Accenture, whose sponsorship deal with the Tour ends this year.

He did briefly note that other formats were under consideration, including 36 holes of medal play to winnow the field.  I'll keep my powder dry until our weekly Q&A, as that's an inevitable discussion topic.