Jason Day found out he would be playing at the weekend at about 9pm on Friday when he got round to checking where the cut mark was after finishing his second round, to use his own words, in a coffin.
On Friday, he had stood on the 16th tee at level par only to walk off the 18th on five over after peeling off three sixes in a row and left the course in high dudgeon, convinced he had missed a third cut in a row after the US Open and the Travelers Championship.
Weather was to be his saviour as the afternoon starters struggled for par in the deteriorating conditions and Day slipped into the field right on the cut line, which had moved back from a projected four over – where it had been for most of the afternoon – while Day had something to eat, watched the film The Expendables 2 and decided against going to the gym, instead heading out to get some ice cream.
“It’s not fun going home early on the weekend, especially when you come across the pond, because you don’t know what you’re doing trying to change flights and all that stuff,” he said.
“You can’t think about stuff like that. You have to come into a week like this, try and prepare the best you can.”
Day usually likes to get a couple of full rounds in before the real due diligence starts at a major but this time his preparations were put back a day for Royal Birkdale by the presence of Donald Trump and Airforce One at JFK last Saturday, which caused flight delays and a mass backlog. Day pushed his flight back to Sunday, arrived here on Monday and did not get out on the course until Tuesday.
The weather that afternoon was as blissful as it was benign on Saturday morning, when it provided a perfect antidote to the 36-hole grind that had preceded it for most, and during which Day hauled himself back into the reckoning for another top-10 finish, if not better, with a five-under 65. Indeed, he felt it could have been better as he left four putts “right in the heart”.
Sent out with the words of his wife to encourage him – “You’ve got nothing to lose, you’re dead last, anyway” – Day sunk a 14-footer at the 2nd to get going. Then, taking advantage of the teebox being moved to the front option for the dogleg 346-yard, par-four 5th to make it reachable over the trees, he got there with a three wood – while his partner Andy Sullivan did so with a driver – as they gave themselves longish eagle putts and walked off with tap-in birdies.
Sullivan holed a huge putt at the 8th to join Day at three over but a 12-footer at the 9th, with more to follow at the 10th and 15th, completed a satisfying round for Day that got him back to level par and came as something of a bonus which he feels can finally give his season momentum. Sullivan finished with a 69 for four over.
“I drove it much better. I hit a lot of good iron shots and I holed putts,” Day said. “It’s a lot more fun today. If I can do that and play the way I did going into tomorrow, there’s definitely a chance of shooting 61.”
Before the tournament, Day was presented with the Mark McCormack Award for the player who has spent the most weeks at No1 the previous year. That he is No6 now is a result of taking time off to resting a problematic back and missing the world golf championship in Mexico to spend time with his mother, who had been diagnosed with lung cancer but is now in remission after undergoing an operation in the United States, and the consequent loss of form.
“When you feel like you’re going to lose someone who is very close to you, there’s nothing you want to do more than just be with them and you don’t even want to think about playing golf or even working. So there’s a stretch there where I’d just go home and just sit around with her,” he said earlier in the week. “And [it was] the time that I would be spending working and practising. It caught up to me.”
Day also needs to make up for lost time on other fronts, too, after failing to win as many majors as he seemed destined for when he burst on to the scene with runners-up finishes in the 2011 Masters and US Open.
He has the 2015 US PGA to his name, but a record of nine top-10 finishes in 21 major outings suggest that at the age of 29 he is overdue another – if only to move his name up the list from alongside players such as Shaun Micheel, Mark Brooks and Rich Beem on the list of one-time major winners.
