Five of world\u2019s 10 top players will compete at Innisbrook\u2019s par-71 Copperhead course
\nMIAMI
\nPlaying partners Collin Morikawa and Viktor Hovland, the world\u2019s number two and three players, will be chasing the summit of the global rankings at the US PGA Valspar Championship starting Thursday.
\nFive of the world\u2019s 10 top players will compete at Innisbrook\u2019s par-71 Copperhead course at Palm Harbor, Florida, with Spain\u2019s Jon Rahm in jeopardy of losing the number one spot.
\nAmerican Morikawa, the reigning British Open champion and 2021 PGA Championship winner, and Norway\u2019s Hovland, who won at Mayakoba in November and the World Challenge in December, are each at the highest ranking of their respective careers.
\nMorikawa or Hovland, together in Thursday and Friday groups, would become world number one for the first time with a victory. Morikawa would take the top spot with as low as a three-way share of second \u2013 provided Hovland isn\u2019t the winner.
\n\u201cIt would be huge,\u201d Morikawa said. \u201cIt would be definitely a part of my career I would remember but I want to stay there as well.
\n\u201cAnyone would love to get there and everyone would see the satisfaction in the work and everything you have put in. But whether I get there next week or whether I get there whenever or whether I don\u2019t get there, the work is not going to stop because I feel I can still get better.
\n\u201cI want to be the best in the world but that\u2019s going to require a lot of consistency, a lot of other areas of my game to be a little more consistent. I\u2019ve shown it in certain events where I\u2019m able to put it together but I want to keep doing that, keep working on those little things.\u201d
\nMorikawa said thoughts of taking the top spot have snuck into his thoughts and prevented his best efforts in prior events.
\n\u201cI think the biggest thing for me is just I need to focus on this week,\u201d he said. \u201cI say that every time, but there have been times where it crept in, where you think about world number one, you think about what I need to do.
\n\u201cI really want to focus on (winning) this week because I want to win. It feels like it has been a while.\u201d
\nAmerican Justin Thomas, ranked eighth, became world number one for just over a month in 2018. The 2017 PGA Championship winner appreciates the feat of reaching the top spot since he hasn\u2019t been there in a while.
\n\u201cIt feels like a really long time,\u201d Thomas said.
\n\u201cI\u2019ve looked at it before, especially in terms of the points that I\u2019ve had. There\u2019s a lot of years and a lot of months and weeks where I would have had the number one in the world ranking at other times. But that\u2019s unfortunate. It doesn\u2019t matter. It\u2019s an irrelevant kind of thing.
\n\u201cI just think it\u2019s really a huge accomplishment and it\u2019s very hard to get to. I don\u2019t think I under-appreciated how hard it was to get there. I may have under-appreciated how hard it is to stay there.
\n\u201cTo just consistently be that consistent, that good, all the time is something that\u2019s very, very hard to do.\u201d
\nAustralian Cameron Smith, coming off a victory on Monday in the final round of the Players Championship, withdrew from next week\u2019s WGC Match Play event, saying he wanted to rest and spend more time with his mother and sister in their first time together in more than two years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Five of world\u2019s 10 top players will compete at Innisbrook\u2019s par-71 Copperhead course MIAMI Playing partners Collin Morikawa and Viktor Hovland, the world\u2019s number two and three players, will be chasing the summit of the global rankings at the US PGA Valspar Championship starting Thursday. Five of the world\u2019s 10 top players will compete at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-249987","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-sports"},"yoast_head":"\n