Wyatt Worthington II wins men’s division of THE JOHN SHIPPEN National Golf Invitational presented by Rocket Mortgage

THE OVERVIEW By Ben Everill, PGATOUR.COM A year ago, Jason Day was the world’s top-ranked player and although he hadn’t won since May of 2016, you would have bought stock in his 2017 season. Sadly, you would’ve taken a bath. TOP 30 PLAYERS TO WATCH IN 2018: We’ll countdown our list with one new player each day in December. Click here for the published players. MORE: Top 30 explanation and schedule Day, whose 2016 PLAYERS Championship win was his seventh PGA TOUR win in 17 starts at the time, has been back-pedaling since and now finds himself at an interesting crossroads. He’s just turned 30 and slipped to 12th in the world rankings over the course of 2017 following a winless season. There were legitimate excuses – the biggest being a serious health scare for his mother – but even so, more is expected from the 10-time TOUR winner. He had chances.  He lost in a playoff at the AT&T Byron Nelson, imploded when in great position at the PGA Championship and was unable to reel in countryman Marc Leishman at the BMW Championship despite being on his tail all tournament. Telling also was losing a 54-hole lead to unheralded Cameron Davis at his home Australian Open in November. Late in the season, he took long-term coach and mentor Colin Swatton off caddie duties and added good friend Luke Reardon to the bag in an effort to change the mojo. But now the slate is wiped clean and 2018 will show us plenty. Will we get a new reinvigorated Day ready to grind and fight his way to the top a la the version we saw before his ascension to the world No. 1? Or will we see the talented but not quite as focused version prone to untimely mistakes we saw in 2017? Given his talent, we expect the former. Watch out for this guy. BY THE NUMBERS How Jason Day ranked in Strokes Gained statistics during his last full season on the PGA TOUR. FEDEXCUP Current 2017-18 position: 56th Playoff appearances: 10 TOUR Championship appearances: 7 Best result: 3rd (2015) INSIGHTS FROM THE INSIDERS PGATOUR.COM’s Insiders offer their expert views on what to expect from Jason Day in 2018. TOUR INSIDER by Cameron Morfit Somehow, some way, Day has got to rediscover the closing kick. Recent results would seem to be encouraging, but there’s always a caveat. His solo fourth at the BMW Championship got him into the TOUR Championship, but that seemed like a hollow moral victory for a player who has won 10 times on TOUR and reached No. 1 in the world. He finished fifth at the Australian Open in November, but his final-round 73 did him no favors. Having slipped to 12th in the world and coming off a tough Presidents Cup, Day, 30, must settle his caddie situation and rediscover the player who dominated the game for the latter half of 2015.   Click here to follow Cameron on Twitter FANTASY INSIDER by Rob Bolton When he checked up shy of $3 million for 2016-17, he was arguably the hottest value for full-season salary gamers this season. The Aussie then made his first start as a 30-year-old at his national open in November. It was a rare treat for him to continue competing in the last quarter of the calendar year. With personal distractions negatively impacting focus and form early in the year a thing of the past, and with a busy fall in the books, 2018 is setting up to be a boon. Buy. Buy. Buy. Click here to follow Rob on Twitter EQUIPMENT INSIDER by Jonathan Wall He added a yet-to-be-released TaylorMade P-790 long iron at the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational. He’s one of the first players to put a set of P-750 Tour Proto irons in play. Iron lofts are 2 degrees strong across the board to produce a more penetrating flight. Milled Grind wedges have a raw finish that allows them to rust over time. Used three different putters (Spider Red, White Spider and TP Ardmore 2) over the course of the final four months of the year. Click here to follow Jonathan on Twitter STYLE INSIDER by Greg Monteforte The biggest apparel move of 2017 saw Day donning Nike’s swoosh. As one of the biggest sneakerheads on TOUR, Day is a natural fit for Nike’s range of sporty kicks. In fact, in 2017 he laced up nearly every shoe in Nike’s golf range. In 2018, look for the Lunar Command 2 shoes to be his go-to, but he’ll likely work in everything from the freshest Jordans to personal editions of other models. Click here to follow Greg on Twitter

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Patrick Rodgers … Ever since the Stanford product first broke onto the scene with Special Temporary Membership in 2014-15, he’s been a regular at the tournament nearest his Cardinal stomping grounds. It’s been a mixed bag at Silverado, but the prize was a T6 in his second appearance in what was his first with official membership in the fall of 2015. Coincidentally, he’s coming off a mixed bag of a third full season on the PGA TOUR that concluded with a DNP in the FedExCup Playoffs because he attended a wedding in Scotland. The Safeway is his first action since a T24 at the Wyndham Championship. Completed last season at ninth in strokes gained: putting and eighth in conversion percentage inside 10 feet. Kevin Tway … If he can roll what he put on display in the second half of 2017-18 into the fall, we’ll be talking about a special start en route to what might be a breakout season. The 30-year-old recorded three top 10s and another trio of top 25s in his last 10 starts before the FedExCup Playoffs in which he survived the first two cuts to finish 24-for-31 and T17 in par-5 scoring. He’s also made the cut in both prior trips to Silverado where his muscle off the tee has paid dividends. Harold Varner III … Back for redemption after plummeting 48 spots to T59 with a closing 81 a year ago, but he walked off a T15 in 2016 with a 65. His aggressive tee-to-green tendency slots him inside the top third on TOUR in distance of all drives, greens in regulation and par-5 scoring. A terrific July triggered a third straight trip to the FedExCup Playoffs and he’s arrived at Silverado with a modest consecutive cuts made streak of six. Sungjae Im … Nearly three full years younger than fellow South Korean native Si Woo Kim, the 20-year-old Im has elevated expectations to an absurd level given his youth. Currently 97th in the Official World Golf Ranking, he’s immediately ahead of Ted Potter, Jr., who won at Pebble Beach earlier this year, and fellow Web.com Tour graduate Cameron Davis, who recorded two third-place finishes in the Finals and prevailed at the 2017 Australian Open. Im authored his own phenomenal script with two wins and three seconds on the Web.com Tour in 2018. So wide was his margin in earnings (finishing at $156,832 over runner-up Kramer Hickok), he sat out the Web.com Tour Championship. Prior to that, he may have set a precedent for a Web.com Tour player by qualifying for the PGA Championship via the OWGR before gaining entry into any non-major. Indeed, this week’s Safeway will mark his PGA TOUR debut in a non-major. He sacrifices distance off the tee for accuracy, but still finished T5 in par-5 scoring on the Web. Tyler McCumber … You think Francesco Molinari has been on fire over the last few months? If McCumber keeps it up, people are going to be referring to 10-time PGA TOUR winner, Mark McCumber, as Tyler’s dad instead of the reverse. The 27-year-old won three times on the Mackenzie Tour-PGA TOUR Canada this summer and paced the circuit in both scoring and earnings. Since 2013 when the PGA TOUR took management control, notable season leaders of the Order of Merit have included Mackenzie Hughes (2013), Joel Dahmen (2014), J.J. Spaun (2015) and 2018-19 PGA TOUR rookie Kramer Hickok (2017). With his first two titles, McCumber also became the first Mackenzie Tour player in history to win consecutive tournaments. And it’s not like it came out of nowhere. He’s also a three-time winner on the PGA TOUR Latinoamérica.

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CROMWELL, Conn. – Monday qualifier James Driscoll is not taking any chances this week – specifically in protecting himself against the sun. The 40-year-old Boston native, making his first PGA TOUR start in 2-1/1 years, is not only wearing a long-sleeve shirt under his golf polo, he also wears a scarf that wraps around his face and covers his neck, along with a Byron Nelson-style Panama hat. It’s a different look from everybody else in the Travelers Championship field – especially this week as temperatures threatened to break 80 degrees on Friday — but nobody can argue about its effectiveness against the sun’s damaging rays. “Every dermatologist would recommend staying out of the sun as much as possible,â€� said Driscoll, who turned pro in 2001 and is making his 241st start on TOUR. “I just know everyone should protect themselves from the sun as much as possible.â€� To that end, Driscoll – who’s best TOUR finishes are two playoff losses in 2005 and 2009 — is working on launching his own golf clothing line that will specialize in long-sleeve apparel emphasizing sun protection. He expects to receive his first samples soon and would like to launch his line within the next year. “The last thing golf needs is another clothing company,â€� said Driscoll, who currently lives in Jupiter, Florida, and was a full-time Web.com Tour member last season. “But this is a long-sleeved golf shirt for the sun. … “I think the future is that people are going to be wearing a lot more coverage.â€� Asked what he thought of the long-sleeve button-down shirts that Phil Mickelson wore at THE PLAYERS Championship in May, Driscoll replied: “I like that it’s long sleeves and protects you from the sun. But it’s a little too formal for me. Mine’s a little bit more casual.â€� As for this week, Driscoll opened with a 4-under 66 and followed that Friday with a 2-over 72 that leaves him at 2 under, which had him sitting on the cut line when he signed his scorecard. Provided he makes the cut, he can credit a hole-out from the greenside bunker for birdie at the par-3 eighth, which was his next-to-last hole for the day. And as for what kind of reaction his apparel has received from the gallery, Driscoll – who began wearing a Mohawk a couple of years ago – just shrugged. “People think I’m a little weird anyway,â€� he said, “so I don’t think people are too surprised.â€�

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