Written by Brendan Porath at SB Nation.com
Well, we now have our 2016 Masters favorite and it’s not the player we all pegged a month ago, two months ago or at the start of the year. The oddsmakers may give Jordan Spieth and Rory McIlroy comparable, or even lower odds than Jason Day at Augusta this year, but those are simply for betting games. Day is the favorite and the best player in the world once again.
This, of course, is a much more fickle title these days. It is not the Tiger era when, no matter how ugly a month or two he’d have, Woods was always the top talent, favorite and No. 1 player in the world. We’re now rotating among a corps of world-class talents who seem to make their runs in spurts and right now Day, who edged McIlroy on Sunday and backed up last week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational win with a WGC-Dell Match Play title, is better than everyone else. The next closest is probably neither Spieth nor Rory, but rather his Aussie mate Adam Scott, who also won in consecutive weeks last month on the Florida swing.
The rankings would now corroborate Day’s favored status, as he moved back to No. 1 in the world on Saturday simply by advancing to the final four at the WGC-Dell Match Play, while then-No. 1 Spieth lost in his first match of the knockout Sweet 16 round. Day began the year with a quieter approach than his two contemporaries. Rory and Spieth played in different spots around the globe and did not take many weeks off. McIlroy ended 2015 by professing he could get back No. 1 in the world before the Masters and he played a heavier schedule than he normally does in this run-up to Augusta. Rory had moments and rounds where he’s looked like the No. 1 player, but Day’s come on and done exactly what McIlroy had planned and pronounced in that 2015 end-of-year assessment.
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