His back ailing, Woods is merely an onlooker _ for now

Rickie Fowler (64) finished third at 21-under-par, with world No. 1 and defending champion Jordan Spieth (67) left to settle for fourth place, five shots back.

Watson didn’t make a bogey all weekend until the final hole when he jokingly asked NBC field reporter Notah Begay how many shots he needed to win. If I get to 10, then I can switch it from there.

Watson’s year is not finished. No, not that Bubba Watson was challenged in his superb march to the title, but the fact that he first made a decision to pass the tournament to spend time with his young family because his daughter would have been unable to come to Bahamas for the event, as she did not have a passport.

“Watson, who had only taken up the chance to play in the exclusive 18-man tournament after Jason Day withdrew earlier in the week, was never seriously challenged as final round partner Casey slipped back into the pack. I have to thank the USA government and passport office for getting Dakota a passport so we could be here”, Watson said. Despite Woods, 40 on December 30, conceding on Wednesday that his playing career could be over and saying on NBC’s Sunday telecast that he “can’t do anything at all” yet to recover from his third back surgery, the Golden Bear’s not buying it. Guys that have been up there every year, that’s what I’m looking at, that’s what I want to do.

“I think I won because I had more birdies this week than any one else”. Its been a great year, but I seemed to have run out of gas towards the end in the last 3-4 weeks in WGC, China and here. “It’s a season that, for me, I now put those kind of expectations on myself each season and whether that’s fair or not it doesn’t matter to me, I’m still going to work as hard as I can to try to achieve the same kind of year we had this year, because it certainly was fun”. “So if I want to stay at the top, I’m going to have to outwork them and that’s going to be challenging”.

“If I ever become No. 1 in the world, ever, somehow, I’m walking away”, the sport’s fourth-ranked player said after earning world ranking points in the unofficial PGA Tour event at which the injured Woods cruised around in a golf cart with his kids.

Justin Rose who lives at Albany and has lingered at the bottom of the leaderboard all week set the course record with a 62.