Jason Day and Alex Noren had to return to Torrey Pines at 8:04 a.m. Monday morning to complete their Farmers Insurance Open title playoff. The previous afternoon, darkness had descended coming off the greeb of their fifth playoff hole, forcing play to be suspended until the following morning. This in turn meant that the weekly world rankings update was delayed for 24 hours.
When the 30-year-old Australian settled the tournament in his favor with a birdie on the sixth extra hole (the first and only one of the day), he was able to celebrate his 11th PGA Tour victory and first since the 2016 Players Championship, a significant step in his determination to return to the highest levels after suffering an annus horribilis in 2017, when his mother was recovering from lung cancer and his wife suffered a miscarriage.
The former world number one (for the first time in 2015) gained four rungs in the world ranking to tenth in the current rankings as the top seven remained unchanged, including second-ranked Jon Rahm, who was well on track to successfully defend his title in San Diego before slipping back over the weekend to a share of 29, eight strokes ahead of the winner.
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