Jordan Spieth, Jason Day: Who's golf's Player of the Year?

ATLANTA, Ga. — The ball curled toward the hole, a good 28 feet from where it started its roll. You knew this was going in. This was a Jordan Spieth putt, after all, and Spieth putts aren't like yours or mine.

Only ... this one didn't go in. The ball stopped 13 inches short of the cup. "Wow," Spieth said to himself, walking off the green, and it wasn't an expression of satisfaction with his talent for rolling it close.

Right afterward, Jason Day dropped his third birdie in three holes to start the day at the Tour Championship. It was a metaphor for this point in the season ... Spieth playing well, Day playing just a touch better. And it set up one of the great golf debates of recent years: Who's the Player of the Year, Spieth or Day?

On one hand, you've got Jordan Spieth. Winner of the season's first two majors, the Masters and the U.S. Open, and a top-four finisher in the other two. His young-phenom stage lasted about as long as a single round of golf; he went from promising up-and-comer to fully formed star virtually instantly.

On the other, Jason Day. He's spent the last few years knocking at the door of every major he played in, and like a burglar looking for a weak spot, he finally found a way in. Day won the PGA Championship, along with four other Tour tournaments this year, and is playing so far ahead of the rest of the field right now he's out of view.

"If we had to put it in words these days, it's like Jordan Spieth and Rory McIlroy had a baby and I was it,"" Day laughed earlier this week, coining one of the lines of the year. "Because I've got Rory's length and I'm hoping that I've got Jordan's touch."

"I wouldn't say this is what golf needs, because everything was going fine before all this talk came up," Spieth said earlier this week. "But I think it's cool to have guys battle it out in the biggest stages and not be scared of each other."

Golf is a sport so perpetually entranced by its own history that it seeks to categorize moments in their historical context even as they're happening. This mania for instant canonization is like stuffing a wriggling cat into a drawer; it rarely fits as neatly as you'd like.

The era of Tiger Woods is over. We can all agree on that, yes? If Woods, currently sidelined until at least early 2016, wins another major, it'll be an outlier, not a continuation of a dynasty. Rory McIlroy seemed poised to carry the mantle of Woods forward into the 2010s, winning four majors and looking, at his best, as unbeatable as Woods was back in the early 2000s.

But then along came Spieth, 21 years old and already possessed of more grace and gravitas than players twice his age. He won those two majors earlier this year and appeared poised for a Grand Slam, and suddenly the Rory Era was done and the Spieth Era was upon us.

Oh, but hang on. Jason Day, the perpetual majors leaderboard lurker, finally broke through with his victory at this year's PGA Championship. He'd already won two other times on Tour this year, and followed his PGA win with victories in the playoff events at The Barclays and the BMW Championship. So is this the McIlroy-Spieth-Day Era? Are we in the midst of a new Big Three? Do we throw in Rickie Fowler for a Big Four, or do we, as Spieth suggested, add in this week's Tour Championship winner for a Big Five?

It's all a bit ridiculous, this need for immediate sanctification, but putting aside all that, there's this truth: we are in the midst of some truly exceptional golf. The sport is deeper than any time in its history, thanks to the influx of international players, which makes the exploits of Spieth, Day and McIlroy even more impressive. Between them, they've won five of the last six majors, and McIlroy might well have won that sixth, this year's British Open, had he not played a boneheaded game of soccer with his mates and injured himself shortly before the tournament's start.

So McIlroy essentially kicked himself out of competition for the top player on Tour this year. It's worth noting that when we discuss the "Player of the Year" award, we're talking about an award voted on by the players themselves, and only the players, so they're not necessarily burdened with the weight of attempting to codify every swing in its historical context.

In short, though, here's what's at stake: quality versus quantity. Season-long excellence versus a historic peak. Spieth has won four tournaments this year, the Valspar and the John Deere in addition to those two majors, but he's faltered of late, missing the cut in two of his last three tournaments. Day, meanwhile, has won four of the last six he's played ... and Spieth has had a front-row seat for all of it.

"When it's not fun, it motivates me," Spieth said earlier this week. "It doesn't make me angry. It makes me want to get back to the level I was playing at this whole year, to get on top of my game and see if the top of my game can beat the top of anybody else's game when they're at their best."

They came into this week's Tour Championship, the PGA Tour's playoff finale, seeded 1-2 as a result of their stellar play, and conventional wisdom held that this would be a winner-take-all event; whoever reeled in this weekend's tournament and the associated FedEx Cup would be in line for the Player of the Year. And that may well be how it shakes out, but in this corner, we're giving the nod to Spieth, despite his recent stumbles. He finished 1-1-4-2 in majors, and in golf, it's majors that run the show. Even Day himself concedes the point.

"Everyone's talking about who is Player of the Year," said Day, who went 28-9-4-1 in majors this season. "If I do win this, yeah, it may turn some heads, may turn some of my peers. But to be honest, I think he's played better."

"We all respect each other, we're all close to each other, we're friends," Spieth said. "The fact that five out of the last six Majors are won by guys in their 20s and you would consider young, up and comers, it just shows that in the biggest stages of what we do, we're fearless, and we embrace the opportunity."

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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter.

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