Playing less than two weeks after losing several Philippino family members to Typhoon Haiyan, Jason Day logged his first victory since 2010 by capturing the World Cup of Golf on home ground at Royal Melbourne.  This was the revitalized event’s first playing since restructuring its format to emphasize individual play (Day won $1.2 million for his two-stroke victory, while the team first prize was onlty $300,000 per man) and it ended up providing a moderate degree of drama as Day and Denmark’s Thomas Bjorn initially stood tied through five holes of the final round.  Day then holed an 80-yard wedge shot to eagle the 312-yard 6th which, combined with Bjorn bogeys at the 6th and 7th, quickly expanded his lead to four.  But that margin was soon wiped out by a Day double-bogey at the 10th, combined with the resilient Bjorn making birdies at both the 11th and 13th.  The pair then remained tied until the 458-yard 16th, where Bjorn bogeyed and Day holed a crucial seven-foot par putt to regain the lead, with his final margin of victory over Bjorn being two.  Day’s fine play factored heavily into the team event as well, as he combined with a red-hot Adam Scott to help make Australia the first nation to win the cup on home soil since Ernie Els and Wayne Westner were victorious in South Africa in 1996………………Denmark’s 25-year-old Morten Orum Madsen broke through for his first major tour victory at the venerable South African Open, and in the process became the first champion of the European Tour’s 2014 season – even if  five weeks still remained in calendar 2013.  Madsen played highly consistent golf all week but after rounds of 67-66-69, he trailed 54-hole lead (and popular pre-tournament favorite) Charl Schwartzel by one going into Sunday.  Schwartzel, however, would suffer through a painfully up-and-down final round, tearing out of the box with birdies and the 2nd, 3rd and 4th, then collapsing with a watery double-bogey at the 182-yard 6th, then another double at the 436-yard 10th.  He would fight gamely back with three back nine birdies but in the end, it would only be enough to tie recent Q School graduate Marco Crespi for fourth.  Madsen, meanwhile, played the steadiest of golf, posting five birdies against no bogeys, and logging three of them in the critical moments at the 13th, 15th and 16th.  His 19-under-par 269 total would, in the end, provide a two-shot margin over a pair of South Africans, Jbe Kruger and Hennie Otto, the latter of which incinerated a four-stroke back nine lead, partially by going bogey, double-bogey at the 15th and 16th………………World #8 Luke Donald arrived at the Dunlop Phoenix as the event’s defending champion, yet when he opened play with a two-over-par 73, he seemed destined to perhaps be only an afterthought in the 2013 edition.  But from that moment forward, Donald was clearly the class of the relatively strong international field, putting together rounds of 66-65-66 to ultimately run away to a six-shot victory.  Things still looked competitive on Saturday as Donald only led South Korea’s Hyung-Sung Kim by two through 54 holes.  But the 35-year-old former world #1 wasted little time in expanding his lead on Sunday, birdieing three of his first four holes en route to an outgoing 32, after which he strolled leisurely home to victory.  Kim hung on to claim solo second, one stroke ahead of Japanese star Shingo Katayama (who closed with 65) and four ahead of Shunsuke Sonoda and Spain’s Gonzalo Fernandez-Castano, who joined Americans Billy Horschel (T14) and Keegan Bradley (T41) as additional foreign world top-50 players in the field………………With his father serving as his caddie, former PGA Tour and current Web.com Tour player Aron Price put together rounds of 66-66-67-70 to claim his first 72-hole victory since 2008, cruising to a four-shot triumph in the New South Wales Open in Sydney.  Price’s opening three rounds placed him in a commanding position and he capitalized on that by playing almost monotonously steady golf on Sunday, carding 16 pars, plus birdies at the par-5 1st and 15th, en route to his closing 70.   Indeed, his play over the entire week was so unwavering that he recorded but a single bogey over the 72 holes – and he got it out of the way early at the par-3 2nd hole on Thursday.