D. Johnson among best in winning frequency

Welcome to the Monday Finish where we hope you’ll join us for a brief memorial service for the 58 balls we lost this week at Trump National Doral’s 18th hole.

Dustin Johnson won the World Golf Championships-Cadillac Championship in his fifth start of the season, outlasting Bubba Watson and J.B. Holmes in a Sunday survival test at Trump National Doral. Further south, Alex Cejka won a five-man playoff to claim his first PGA TOUR victory at the Puerto Rico Open.

SOMETHING RANDOM TO THINK ABOUT

Sunday marked Dustin Johnson’s ninth PGA TOUR win in his 163rd start. Here’s a quick look at how that compares to the game’s recent prolific winners:

• Tiger Woods (79 wins, 318 starts): 1 in 4
• Rory McIlroy (9 wins, 89 starts): 1 in 9.8
• Phil Mickelson (42 wins, 512 starts): 1 in 12.2
• Vijay Singh (34 wins, 551 starts): 1 in 16.2
• Dustin Johnson (9 wins, 163 starts): 1 in 18.1
• Ernie Els (19 wins, 390 starts): 1 in 20.5
• Adam Scott (11 wins, 232 starts): 1 in 21.1
• Zach Johnson (11 wins, 295 starts): 1 in 26.8
• Jim Furyk (16 wins,  528 starts): 1 in 33
• Sergio Garcia (8 wins, 281 starts): 1 in 35.1
• Davis Love III (20 wins, 708 starts): 1 in 35.4
• Steve Stricker (12 wins, 440 starts): 1 in 36.6

THE FIVE BEST STATS OF THE WEEK

1) The stat you most often heard after Johnson’s win at Doral (for good reason) is that he has now had at least one victory in each of the past eight seasons. That’s the longest streak on TOUR.

For comparison, Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer each went 17 consecutive seasons with a victory, while Billy Casper went 16. Tiger Woods won in 14 consecutive seasons from 1996 to 2009.

2) Proof that Dustin plays a different game than the rest of the field when he’s playing well: At Trump National Doral, Johnson led the field in both driving distance (328.3 yards) and greens in regulation (52 of 72). Those stats helped put him second in the field in both strokes gained: tee to green and proximity (35’ 9”).

3) Johnson, who won last season’s WGC-HSBC Champions in China becomes the eighth person to win multiple WGC titles. He has quite a way to go before claiming that record, as well.

4) In his last four starts at the WGC-Cadillac Championship, Bubba Watson has three top-three finishes and $2.2 million in earnings. For slightly-pointless perspective, that four-event total is more than Phil Mickelson’s 2014 earnings.

5) Alex Cejka’s win in Puerto Rico came after a five-man playoff at Trump International. The last five-man playoff on the PGA TOUR was the 2005 BellSouth Classic, which was won by Phil Mickelson. Four of the five players (Cejka, Sam Saunders, Emiliano Grillo and Jon Curran) were making their first playoff appearance on TOUR. Tim Petrovic won the Zurich Classic of New Orleans in a playoff, also in 2005.

THIS WEEK’S THREE BEST VIDEOS

1) Rory McIlroy’s club toss may be the most lasting memory of this year’s WGC-Cadillac Championship, so this video of a scuba diver retrieving the club gets the top spot this week.

2) The second-most head-scratching moment of the week was seeing two aces on the same hole (by two players in contention!) within 30 minutes of each other Saturday at No. 4. You can see both in this week’s Shots of the Week video.

3) Finally, there was this shot by Thongchai Jaidee, which hopefully gave weekend golfers around the world a sense of hope (or at least commiseration).

ODDS AND ENDS

The 18th hole at Trump National Doral is one of the most intimidating finishing holes in golf (it was the toughest hole on the course this week, playing to a stroke average of 4.572). It didn’t look like it to Dustin Johnson on Sunday.

There was plenty of talk early in the week about Adam Scott’s switch to the conventional-length putter at Doral.

Not only did Scott finish T4 at The Blue Monster. He also was 12th in the field in strokes gained: putting for the week.

Chesson Hadley wasn’t able to successfully defend his title at the Puerto Rico Open. His week wasn’t all bad though.

Finally, this week: This photo made me laugh. Even Sir Nick wanted to snap a stealthy photo of Sir Elton.