Only weeks into season, Day’s No. 1 ranking at risk
World’s top player heads powerhouse field at Riviera.
LOS ANGELES — One of Jason Day’s goals at the start of the year was to stay at No. 1 for the entire calendar year. The year is not even two months old, and already he is facing his first big challenge.
And not just from one player.
Dustin Johnson, coming off a third-place fini sh at Pebble Beach, and Phoenix Open champion Hideki Matsuyama both have a mathematical chance to reach No. 1 in the world by winning this week’s Genesis Open at Riviera. Johnson would need Day to finish around fourth or worse, while Matsuyama could reach the top only by winning and Day finishing about 25th or worse.
Tiger Woods in 2009 was the last player to start and finish a year at No. 1.
Rory McIlroy was the last player to stay at No. 1 for longer than a year, starting with his victory at the 2014 Bridgestone Invitational and ending when Jordan Spieth passed him with a runner-up finish in the 2015 PGA Championship.
Just don’t get the idea Day is consumed with the ranking.
“I said earlier that a calendar year would be great to go No. 1, but I need to just focus on what I need to do because you can’t really focus on staying No. 1,” Day said. “The more you focus on the actual target itself, the more you attach yourself to it, you make mental errors out there, you get more frustrated, you do silly things on the golf course that you shouldn’t be doing.”
Johnson also had a mathematical chance to get to No. 1 last week, but he would have had to win Pebble and have Day finish out of the top 50. Day tied for fifth. Johnson also had a chance at the PGA Championship last summer, but he missed the cut and Day was runner-up.
Day doesn’t have a lot of history at Riviera, with his best finish a tie for 62nd. The only reason he is playing is because of the tour’s new “strength of field” regulation that requires most players to compete at an event they haven’t been to in four years.
The rule has helped bring eight of the world’s top 10 players to the Genesis Open.
Ailing Woods unable to address media
Back spasms not only kept Tiger Woods from playing at Riviera, they forced him to withdraw from a news conference.
Woods, the unofficial host of the Genesis Open, pushed his new conference back until Wednesday and then canceled it. The tournament said in a statement that after getting daily treatment the last four days, Woods was advised by doctors to limit all activities. Even talking? “He flew out here and got to see one of his doctors,” Mark Steinberg, his agent at Excel Sports, said Wednesday. “Based on the work they did the last couple of days, they advised he just stay horizontal. It’s best to listen to the doctors. The ultimate goal is to get out and play.”
Missing a news conference only fueled speculation about when he might play again. Steinberg said he was aware it looked bad that Woods was unable to sit for 20 minutes and take questions, though he’s not sure how much substance a media session would provide.
“It would have gone like many of them has gone the past several weeks — a lot of questions and no answers. Frustrating for him,” Steinberg said. “But he has given full, maximum effort to get back out here.”