Jordan Spieth may regard Rickie Fowler's sudden surge as perfectly natural but the world number one has still played down talk of the fellow American being an established top-four player.
Fowler's triumph at the HSBC Championship in Abu Dhabi on Sunday means the 27-year-old has completed a run of four victories in only eight months. He has moved to number four in the world for the first time; suggesting he has joined Spieth, Jason Day and Rory McIlroy in detaching themselves from the rest. Golf, it is claimed, has a four-man elite.
Spieth regards this notion as premature. He pointed to the fact Day has hardly hit a competitive ball since the tail end of 2015. “I think Jason would be a little insulted by all of this,” Spieth said, albeit with a smile. “He’s been pretty decent, so no, I think everything is still premature. I think it’s still too early for this talk. I think people are searching for something that is only going to take time. It does nothing but kind of add stuff to our heads that may not need to be there.
Multiple events
“What Rickie is doing is fantastic. It’s not surprising whatsoever. Rickie is going to win multiple events each year, I believe; so will Rory, so will Jason and hopefully I will do the same and there will be a few others.
“If that happens, then I believe the talk can start – but last year was a great year. This year looks like it’s getting off to a great continuation from the top five to 10 in the world point of view but I think it’s still early.”
Spieth is right to highlight a changing narrative. For a while, McIlroy seemed destined to dominate. Spieth came along and altered that scene before Day ended his Major drought. Now, Fowler is fulfilling undoubted earlier promise.
Spieth will head for Singapore, completing a run during which he has featured in China, Hawaii, Australia and the Middle East since the start of November. He admitted such scheduling will not be commonplace, with fatigue a factor as he finished tied for fifth in Abu Dhabi.
The 22-year-old said: “It won’t be something that I do in the future, to bounce back and forth from Asia as much as we did or Australia. I’m very tired right now. . . It shows in certain places and this week, the first day I was here, I was striping it; since then I was just a little weak with everything, and just my decision-making was a little off”
Fowler is not of a mind to stop here.
“This is a great start. Hopefully, it is just a start,” he said of his year’s goals.
“Golf’s just in a really good position right now. Having what Jason did last year through the summer, what Jordan did all year, still doing it, and Rory, I mean, he had a not-so-good year and won four times. That’s a pretty good not-so-good year.
“ The level of golf is very high and it’s pretty special to be ranked fourth now.
“I’ve got my eye on No1, that would be the ultimate goal, but I’m up against some pretty tough competition.” Jason Dufner won his fourth PGA Tour title with a two-hole play-off victory over Sweden’s David Lingmerth at the CareerBuilder Challenge in California.
Dufner, who has not won a tournament on the tour since his 2013 PGA Championship, was victorious thanks to a par on the second extra hole after Lingmerth had sent his second shot into the water.
Both men were tied on 25 under after the regulation 18 holes, but it took an outrageous escape shot from Dufner (who shot a 70) on the 17th to even force a play-off.
After hitting his tee shot into the rocks surrounding an island green, luckily evading water, he somehow managed to find a decent lie and produced a superb chip shot which hit the flag and almost went in, instead tapping in for an unlikely par.
Phil Mickelson, Kevin Na and Andrew Loupe were all tied in third on 21 under.
