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Beginning of 2015 proves it's harder than ever to win on Tour

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PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. – Five weeks into the new year, all five winners on the PGA Tour were among the top 50 in the world.

Jason Day didn’t need numbers to illustrate what is becoming increasingly clear.

”The game is kind of changing,” Day said after winning a four-man playoff at Torrey Pines. ”It’s evolving into very young, tall, big, strong-looking guys out here that hit it a mile and have fantastic touch. It’s getting tougher. It’s really tough to win out here.”

That’s easy for him to say with only three PGA Tour wins in eight years. For all his talent, the 27-year-old Australian has been cursed by nagging injuries. His hope is to stay healthy all year and finally achieve, or at least make significant progress, toward his lifelong goal of being No. 1 in the world.

The road to the top, however, is starting to look like a California freeway at rush hour.

Day was 18 when he first started playing on the PGA Tour in 2006, the year that Woods won multiple majors for the second straight year and ended the season by winning his last six PGA Tour events. Woods made it look easy.

The new target is Rory McIlroy, who also can make it look easy. McIlroy already has four majors, one by a record margin (eight shots in the PGA Championship at Kiawah Island) and two in wire-to-wire fashion (US Open at Congressional, British Open at Hoylake). McIlroy is going to make Day’s goal a lot harder to reach.

But it’s everyone around him that will make the road feel even longer.

It’s easy to jump on Day’s bandwagon because he is blessed with enormous power and skill, he believes he has his injuries under control and is more motivated than ever. Day has six top 10s – and no finish out of the top 20 except for injury-related WDs – since the British Open last summer.

But look around.

A week earlier, Brooks Koepka was hailed as a rising star for his victory in the Phoenix Open. The 24-year-old Floridian is powerful, the prototype of the modern golfer, and his quiet work ethic figures to take him even further than he already has come.

Don’t forget Jimmy Walker and his nine-shot win at the Sony Open, the largest margin on the PGA Tour in nearly six years. That was Walker’s fourth victory in his last 32 starts in America. No one has won more during that stretch, and remember, Walker lost a four-shot lead on the back nine at Kapalua and was only two shots out of the playoff at Torrey Pines last week.

The winner at Kapalua? Patrick Reed, who at 24 picked up his fourth career victory.

The list keeps growing.

Koepka was in the mix at the Phoenix Open with Hideki Matsuyama, two-time Masters champion Bubba Watson and hard-charging Jordan Spieth, the 21-year-old Texan who is becoming a fixture among the top 10 in the world. Day was in a playoff at Torrey Pines with Harris English, an athletic 25-year-old from Georgia who already has two PGA Tour wins and has the game that makes other players watch.

”The game is in a good spot, especially with the younger guys,” Day said. ”It’s evolving into a fantastic, powerful sport.”

Most of the players, particularly the younger ones, are a product of the Tiger era. They are better off because they only watched him, they didn’t get beat by him.

”A lot of people of my generation are used to getting our heads bashed in by Tiger,” said Charles Howell III after he missed the playoff at Torrey Pines by one shot. ”These guys don’t really seem to be afraid of anything and they come out ready to win.”

Howell mentioned Spieth and Justin Thomas, a 21-year-old rookie who already has played in the final group on weekends at two tournaments this year.

”Where Tiger used to be the motivating factor,” Howell said, ”these young kids are now.”

Day is playing the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am this week, and he can move up two spots to No. 2 with a victory. He’s still miles from McIlroy. A year ago, Day won the Match Play Championship to reach No. 4 and had legitimate ambitions to reach the top of the ranking. Woods was No. 1, though there were early signs that he was fading. Day wound up missing most of the next three months with a thumb injury, and McIlroy soon ruled the world of golf.

Day always thought he would have to beat Woods. Now it’s McIlroy.

”There’s certain players that come along in this world of golf and make winning look so easy, and he’s one of those guys that make winning look very easy,” Day said of McIlroy. ”I can tell you right now, it’s not easy. It’s not easy to win.”

And that makes the road to the top even harder.

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Notes: Poulter works on putting; Eyes on Olympics

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PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. – The golf world has seen Ian Poulter making five straight birdies in the 2012 Ryder Cup to win a pivotal match and swing momentum toward Europe. It has seen him holing key putts in winning a pair of World Golf Championships.

Poulter has seen the statistics. And he didn’t like what he saw.

For a guy reputed to be among the best with the putter, Poulter spent the last eight weeks working harder than ever on the one part of his game that wouldn’t seem to need much work. Except that when Poulter studied his putting statistics for 2014, he wasn’t happy.

”I think too many people comment on putting that’s happened probably in the Ryder Cup and seem to think that I’m a great putter,” he said. ”When you actually dissect the stats like I did at the end of last year, my putting was nowhere near acceptable.”

He was No. 172 on the PGA Tour in putts holed from 10 to 15 feet. And on par 5 scoring performance – a large part of that is putting for players who can’t routinely reach the green in two – Poulter ranked No. 122.

Perhaps more disturbing was to realize how much it was costing him.

Poulter added a little mystery to self-analysis by mentioning an unidentified player whose statistics were eerily similar from tee-to-green. This player doesn’t hit it further off the tee. They both hit about the same percentage of greens in regulation.

”But he holed more putts from 10 to 20 feet than I did,” Poulter said. ”He won $3 million more than me last year.”

Poulter wasn’t clear on which statistics he was using – he mentioned 10 to 15 feet, 15 to 20 feet and 10 to 20 feet for his putting statistics – but one possibility for this mystery player is Chris Kirk. Poulter said the player was in the top 10 in the area where the Englishman did poorly. Kirk was in the top 10 on putts made from 10 to 15 feet and par 5 scoring performance. He made about $3.2 million more than Poulter last year.

Poulter’s broader point is that his putting has been poor and he is determined to fix it. He said some big tournaments where he made a lot of putts can be a ”smoke screen.”

”I am a good putter,” he said. ”But I miss putts, and that’s a problem. I’m addressing that right now. … The numbers don’t lie. You have to take it on the chin sometimes. You think an area is good and you find out something different from the numbers. They are unacceptable numbers and they will be worked on.”

OLYMPIC GOLD AND THE TRICOLOR: Rickie Fowler drew chuckles when he referred to playing in the Olympics as ”a dream come true that I haven’t ever dreamt of.” That makes sense. Golf hasn’t been in the Olympics since 1904, and Fowler was still in college when the sport was voted in for the 2016 games in Rio.

Carlos Ortiz never dreamed of being an Olympic athlete, either. But the PGA Tour rookie from Mexico is close to making it a reality. And he has reason to like his chances.

”Of course, I want to play. I’m really excited about that,” Ortiz said. ”It’s a little easier for me than some of the guys out here to get into that.”

Countries can only send a maximum of two players – four players if they are in the top 15 in the world – until the field reaches 60. Mexico only has three players listed anywhere in the world ranking, and the other two are nowhere near Ortiz at No. 135. He won three times on the Web.com Tour last year and already has three top 20s in his rookie season on Tour.

Ortiz currently is No. 43 in the Olympic ranking. Fowler is No. 12 in the world, behind four Americans, and thus is not listed.

”If I keep playing good, I believe I’m going to be in the Olympics,” Ortiz said. ”And I believe that’s going to be another major. It’s very exciting. I grew up watching Winter Olympics, Summer Olympics, the normal sports. With golf, it’s a dream come true. Any guy dreams of getting a gold medal for their country.”

TIGER AND TORREY: The wild final round at Torrey Pines on Sunday, where seven players had at least a share of the lead at some point in the final round and Jason Day won in a four-hole playoff, was a reminder of how Tiger Woods once dominated the PGA Tour, especially this golf course.

In the last 15 years of what is now the Farmers Insurance Open, the tournament has been decided by one shot or in a playoff 10 times.

Those five exceptions were Woods winning by four shots in 2013, by eight shots in 2008, by two shots in 2007, by three shots in 2005 and by four shots in 2003.

PGA AWARD: Ron Sirak has been selected to receive the 2015 PGA Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism that honors the media for steadfast promotion of golf on the local and national levels.

Sirak is a senior writer for Golf Digest and previously was executive editor for Golf World. He spent 18 years at The Associated Press and was the golf writer prior to leaving for Golf World in 1998.

He will be honored April 8 at the annual Golf Writers Association of America awards dinner in Augusta, Georgia. Sirak is a past president of the GWAA.

”Ron Sirak has brought readers to the heart of a story, connecting us with many of the amazing personalities in our game while also delivering balanced reporting on issues affecting our industry,” PGA of America President Derek Sprague said.. ”Ron is one of the most trusted voices in golf and a friend to all who play the game.”

DIVOTS: Rory McIlroy is playing the Arnold Palmer Invitational for the first time this year, and the King was thrilled. ”I have talked to Rory about playing here, and it didn’t work into his schedule in the past, but he told me that when it did work into his schedule that he would be here,” Palmer said. ”And he is making good on his word. We look forward to having him.”… Thomas O’Toole was re-elected to another one-year term as USGA president during the annual meeting over the weekend in New York. … Anirban Lahiri of India won the Malaysian Open and moved to No. 37 in the world. … Tiger Woods is likely to be out of the top 70 in the world when – or if – he plays in the Honda Classic after the West Coast swing.

STAT OF THE WEEK: The five players who have won PGA Tour events in 2015 had an average world ranking of 24. The seven players who won PGA Tour events during the fall start of the wraparound season had an average world ranking of 167.

FINAL WORD: ”He’s got 79 wins. Of course, second sucks.” – Jason Day, when asked what he thought about Tiger Woods’ famous comment as a PGA Tour rookie.

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McIlroy plans to play Palmer's event for first time

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Three years ago, Arnold Palmer jokingly suggested that Rory McIlroy needed to add his tournament to his early-season schedule.

Well, at least we think he was joking.

“If he doesn’t come and play at Bay Hill,” Palmer said on “Morning Drive” in November of 2012, “he may have a broken arm and he won’t have to worry about where he plays next.”

Though McIlroy didn’t play the Arnold Palmer Invitational that next year or the year after, he announced Monday morning that he’d make his maiden trip to Bay Hill next month.

The world’s No. 1-ranked player is expected to make his U.S. debut at the Honda Classic, followed by competing at the WGC-Cadillac Championship before a week off and then the Palmer.

McIlroy won three times on the PGA Tour last year, including the British Open, WGC-Bridgestone and PGA Championship in succession. He hasn’t finished outside the top-25 in nearly 18 months.

In his most recent appearance on the European Tour, McIlroy claimed the Dubai Desert Classic title.

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