Best of the Players Championship: The 25 Most Dominant Performances
By Bill Felber
This was Day at the absolute peak of his game. Within the previous 12-month period, he had won the Canadian Open, the PGA, two of the four Tour Championship Series events, the Arnold Palmer and the WGC Match Play, rising to World No. 1 in the process.
At the Players, he continued his extended dominance of the game with an opening round 63 that set up a wire-to-wire victory. He led by four strokes after 36 and 54 holes. That made Sunday something of a pleasure cruise. Two front-nine bogeys briefly reduced his lead over Ken Duke to two shots, but he offset those with birdies at 10 and 12, re-establishing the four-shot margin and never allowing anybody to get as close again.
Day’s performance prompted his fellow Australian, Adam Scott, to compare him to another famously torrid player of a few years back. “That’s Tiger-esque, that kind of run,” Scott said. “The way he’s walking around, he’s got that kind of unbeatable look about him. “
It was Day’s second wire-to-wire victory of the season – he had also dominated the Palmer – and established him as a solid favorite for the following month’s U.S. Open at Oakmont. But an opening round 76 derailed those plans, and although Day rallied his game through the final three rounds he still finished in a tie for eighth, six strokes behind Dustin Johnson.