Friday 19 / April / 2024
Los Angeles: American Dustin Johnson became golf's world number one for the first time on Sunday with his victory at the PGA Tour's Genesis Open in Los Angeles.
Johnson, who had been third in the world rankings, takes over top spot from Australian Jason Day, who had held the honour for 47 consecutive weeks.
U.S. Open champion Johnson needed to win the tournament and see Day finish worse than a tie for third to claim the number one ranking. He won by five strokes while Day finished in a tie for 64th.
Johnson is the 20th player to hold top spot since the inception of the rankings in 1986.
"It sounds good," he said in a greenside interview after his victory at Riviera. "It gives me a lot of confidence. It’s going to push me to work even harder and try to get even better."
American Tiger Woods holds the record for the longest time at number one -- 684 weeks in total including one stretch of 281 consecutive weeks.
Australian Greg Norman (331) is the only other player to have been number one for more than 100 weeks.
Johnson jumped to third last June when he won his first major, the U.S. Open, and moved up to second for much off the second half of 2016 before ending the year ranked third. - Reuters
