Jason Day won the BMW Championship by an impressive six shots and will be in the top spot of the FedExCup standings entering next week’s season finale at the TOUR Championship by Coca-Cola at East Lake Country Club. His 22-under total was the second-lowest on tour this year good for a six-shot victory over rookie Daniel Berger. Day could also fuel the Player of the Year debate with a FedEx Cup victory, but Spieth’s record in the majors this year will still probably prove too much to overcome.
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Day begins his reign as World Number One by playing at The Tour Championship which starts on Thursday. Jordan Spieth went wire-to-wire at the Masters.
Being his sport’s top player is an experience that Day could come to be comfortable with, but hitting the summit for the first time had him struggling to explain his emotions.
He led by as many as seven and by no less than four in the final round and faced no serious challenge as he played conservatively throughout. This would be his fifth win of the year and fourth in his past six starts, so if anything, he was becoming accustomed to front-running his way to glory and a new piece of gleaming hardware. The 27-year-old Day finished with a tournament-best 11.8 strokes gained tee-to-green. He trumped his own performance a few weeks later when he claimed his maiden major title at the PGA Championships, then maintained that momentum to win two of the three Playoff events of the FedExCup – the first player to ever claim that feat heading into the TOUR Championship.
“Its been an wonderful kind of run for me, and now it just tops it off even better to get to number one in the world“.
Day was the only the third-and youngest-Australian to become world No. 1.
A trip to the Tour Championship also brings invitations to the opening three majors of 2016.
Still, no one may be more exciting than Day right now. He continued to play par golf on the back nine until some late round heroics on the 16th.
He was so proud of this plan, so convinced it would happen for him, that Day didn’t mind sharing it with others. “I don’t care what you say, you just don’t do that to your peers”, said US captain Juli Inkster of Los Altos. “I know that a lot of people were thinking against me on that”. He had two bogeys in a five-hole stretch beginning on 13 but he managed to right the ship by draining a 25-foot putt on the par-five 18th for his sixth birdie of the day.
“I still think”, Day added a moment later, “it’s him”.
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Day took a six shot lead into today’s final round and while, perhaps understandably given the circumstances, his game was not as sharp as earlier in the week he was doing enough to hold his chasers at bay. Once again, I’m just a regular guy like everyone else.
