A hop, skip and a jump up the rankings

For all the weekend hackers out there, the chances of making a hole-in-one have been estimated at 12 500 to 1.

For the rest of us slightly less ambitious, more often than not glued to our sofas, this past weekend brought plenty of smiles to golf enthusiasts here, there and everywhere.

With the action pretty much wrapped up for the year, a trio of stars – young and old – made inroads in their own kind of way, hurtling towards a final big bang in 2016. Monday’s latest official world golf rankings backed it all up.

The hop: The latter part of this year definitely belongs to Hideki Matsuyama who has won in four of his last five starts, as well as including a couple of runner-up spots. While all eyes were on Hero World Challenge tournament host Tiger Woods last week, the Japanese quietly crept up the leader board and most importantly, stayed there, even holing out from the fairway on the short par-fourth second, his ball hardly making any contact with the dancefloor before popping in.

Heading into his first USPGA event at the Farmers Insurance early in February, he was ranked 19th in the world. Fast forward a couple of months, and the 24yearold Japanese sensation is banging on the top-five’s door which currently consists of World No 1 Jason Day, followed by Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson, Henrik Stenson and Jordan Spieth.

Known to be one of the best ball strikers on the planet right now, the rock solid Matsuyama is one of the hot favourites for Augusta, but will need to work on his putting to have any chance of bagging that first Major. However, it didn’t take long for the HWC champion to outline his intent, boldly stating that all his focus would be shifted towards the Masters within the next couple of days.

The skip: Since clinching the SA Open earlier this year, it was just a matter of time before Brandon Stone found himself in the winners’ circle once more. Like Hideki, Brandon sidestepped all the fuss directed at favourite, Leopard Creek king Charl Schwartzel, and blitzed his way to his second European Tour title.

Teeing it up last Thursday, the 23-year-old was 107th in the world rankings. Four days later, he had climbed to 75th and can boast a victory in each of his first two seasons since graduating from the European Tour Challenge in 2015. Talk about a massive ripple effect for the little Stone whose effervescence isn’t likely to fizzle out anytime soon.

And finally, the jump into the

unknown: Ranked 898th coming back from his 15-month injury layoff, Tiger Woods – who perhaps understandably had turned a blind eye to his fall in the rankings – joked that if anything, he’d like to crack the top-1 000 in 2017.

The soon-to-be 41-year-old also got some stick for the growing bald patch on his head, but if anything, the break has somewhat softened the former World No 1’s once brittle demeanour. As if he needs anymore fans, right?

His determination not to play until he is 100% healthy has certainly paid off. The long-awaited leap of faith equates to 248 spots up the ladder and with a busier schedule forecast, the new world No 650 is set to leapfrog a couple of hundred spots should everything go to plan.

Like he said on Sunday: “I would like in my heart of hearts to play a full schedule next year”.

Tiger, us too.

@tee_elle_pee PLAYING IT AS IT LIES Tamlyn Patterson