Weekly Recap: Another Trophy Goes With Smith

Just about the last place you'd ever expect to see a final-round grouping of Anirban Lahiri, Sebastian Munoz and Doug Ghim would be THE PLAYERS Championship. Maybe the 3M Open. Perhaps in Reno. But TPC Sawgrass? If that doesn't tell you what kind of week it was in Ponta Vedra Beach, well, you aren't too dialed in.

But at the end of one of the weirdest weeks in golf you ever will see -- certainly for a big-time tournament -- all was right at the end.

Top-10 player Cameron Smith took advantage of the best playing conditions of the week on Monday to register nine birdies, race to the top of the leaderboard and hang on for the biggest title of his career. He shot a 6-under 66 for a 13-under total to defeat a gallant Lahiri by a single shot.

The tournament was beset first by torrential rain and then extreme wind that torpedoed half the field -- the late/early wave for Rounds 1 and 2 -- necessitating a Monday finish.

Smith and just about everyone else near the top of the leaderboard entering the final round got the luck of the draw with the early/late tee times. But Smith still had to deliver Monday as a handful of top guys -- Paul Casey, Viktor Hovland, Sam Burns and Kevin Kisner -- were within striking distance.

Smith won for the second time this year, after capturing the Tournament of Champions, to move to No. 6 in the world -- incredibly ahead of Rory McIlroy, Justin Thomas, Dustin Johnson and other superstars. Of course, Smith himself is now a golf superstar.

The 28-year-old Australian has blossomed into a four-time winner on the PGA Tour -- one being the two-man Zurich Classic -- and he was only a two-time winner when he became our pick to win the Masters in less than a month.

Smith possesses one of the best short games on Tour, plus he's longer and a better iron player than most people realize. He led the elite PLAYERS field in Strokes Gained: Putting, gained more than 11 shots and recorded one-putts on 42 of the 72 holes. That's insanely good. He also was fifth in SG: Approach and 19th in SG: Around-the-Green. For the season, he's third on Tour in SG: Putting, sixth in Approach, 21st in Around-the-Green and 20th in Tee-to-Green.

That's a perfect recipe to win at Augusta. We just hope he didn't give it his best shot a month early.

MONDAY BACKSPIN

Everything we write below comes with a big asterisk. There were so many variables this week that it will be difficult to put too much weight -- positive or negative -- on what happened in this tournament.

Anirban Lahiri
Lahiri entered the final round with the lead. Nobody thought he'd win. He missed by one stroke. Ranked 322nd in the world and struggling for years, the 34-year-old Indian turned in the finest performance of his career with this solo runner-up. He soared to 89th in the OWGR. Sure, Lahiri has won 21 times worldwide, including twice on the DP World Tour, but this was his finest golfing moment. After going down to the wire the past few years to see whether he'd keep his card -- missing more than keeping -- Lahiri should be safe through next season. But his results have been so poor for so long that that this can only be viewed as an aberration.

Paul Casey
Casey has been underrated virtually his entire career. And now he's 44 years old, meaning he's been underrated for a long time. He finished two shots back of Smith. And as many of us saw, he suffered one of the worst breaks imaginable – and it came on the 70th hole of one of the biggest tournaments of the year. On the par-5 16th, Casey hit a spectacular drive, only to see it come to rest fully embedded in a previous player's pitch mark. Instead of trying for eagle, he could only pitch out and wound up scrambling for par. A potential two-shot difference when you lose by two tends to be critical. Still, Casey is now back inside the top-25 in the world -- by far the oldest golfer in that select group -- and now heads to Innisbrook, where he was a two-time champion.

Kevin Kisner
The so-called Bulldog -- and not just because he went to Georgia -- finished solo fourth. That's his third top-8 already this season, leaving him firmly entrenched in the top 50 of the OWGR for the foreseeable future. He's now 33rd. Kisner has many mediocre weeks but he also has a number of good ones. They tend to come at shorter tracks, where his game still strives.

Keegan Bradley
Bradley had perhaps the best chance to catch Smith after birdieing 15 and 16, but a bogey-double bogey finish relegated him to solo fifth. He three-putted 17, which is somewhat expected, but a poor drive on 18 followed by an approach into water was not. Bradley's tee-to-green game is one of the best in golf, and he was fourth in SG: Off-the-Tee and 10th in Approach this week. His putting was not even that bad for him, as he finished 52nd. Sometimes, it's just a mistake or two at the wrong time. Bradley is up to 66th in the world.

Harold Varner III
Varner tied for sixth and, combined with his recent win at Saudi Arabia, now sits 40th in the world rankings. He will be at the Masters next month.

Doug Ghim
This was the best tournament of Ghim's young career, even though he faded Sunday with an even-par 72 to tie for sixth. He's still only 25 and has shown proficiency with his irons. It will be interesting to see how his career develops from here.

Dustin Johnson
Johnson opened 69-73 to make the cut and put himself in position for his first good finish in some time. But then in the benign third-round conditions he ballooned to a 76. Fast forward to Monday's final round and Johnson finally showed us the old DJ, shooting the best round of the day with a 63 and securing a backdoor top-10 at T9. Still, he dropped a spot to 10th in the OWGR. He has not been out of the top-10 in more than seven years. We'll need to see more before declaring DJ "back."

Sebastian Munoz
Munoz was by far the most accomplished golfer in the final group. He's won on Tour and was ranked 66th in the world. But he had a terrible day, plummeting with a final-round 77 that left him tied for 33rd. 

Webb Simpson
Simpson continues to decline with a missed cut. His only top-10s in the past year have come at his go-to tournaments in the Carolinas -- The RSM Classic, Wyndham Championship and RBC Classic.

Patrick Cantlay
Cantlay had a pair of top-25s when this tournament was played in May. But he's now missed three straight cuts in March, so it's more than just this week's weather. Frankly, Cantlay isn't much of a Florida player in general.

Jordan Spieth
Spieth tied for fourth in his maiden PLAYERS in 2014, but since then has been dreadful with five missed cuts in seven starts and two results outside the top 40. 

Cameron Tringale
Tringale just missed qualifying for the Masters at year's end when he wound up 51st in the world rankings. He entered the week 46th but missed the cut and is trying desperately to hang on for his first visit to Augusta.

Brooks Koepka
Koepka got hammered by the weather with a second-round 81. We didn't think he'd be a good for this week. But since he got caught in the bad half of the draw, we'll never know for sure.