Jason Day’s long road back to the winner’s circle

McKINNEY, Texas -- Jason Day had just 3 feet left. That was all that was between him and his first win on the PGA TOUR since 2018. Standing on the 18th green, so many thoughts raced through his head. The first: “What if I miss?”

It’s hard to blame Day for that. It seemed every time things started to go well over the last five years, something came to knock him down a peg. Be it debilitating back pain, occasional bouts of vertigo or the health of his mother, if Day thought he had made a big stride toward reclaiming the game that put him at the top of the golf world, inevitably another roadblock popped up.

So as he sat in the media center Sunday night just a hundred yards or so from where he sank that short putt on the 18th to claim a one-shot victory at the AT&T Byron Nelson, he still hadn’t quite processed that his long journey back had finally culminated in a win. That there was no “but” attached, no boogie man waiting around the corner to pull the rug out from under him again.

Day closed with a bogey-free, 9-under 62 to beat Si Woo Kim and Austin Eckroat by one stroke. He finished 23-under overall at TPC Craig Ranch outside Dallas.

It’s trivial to wonder whether Day thought he’d be back in the winner’s circle. For a while, the 35-year-old Australian wondered if he would ever play pro golf again. Those thoughts surfaced a few years ago at the height of Day’s back issues. He found himself just going through the motions, checking off an arbitrary number of events to meet his contract minimums. He would hardly practice before the tournament started, saving what little pain-free golf he had for when it mattered. The stress was piling up outside of golf, too, as his mother, Dening, was diagnosed with cancer. He never told his wife, Ellie, but he seriously considered retiring from the game. There wasn’t any one moment that convinced him to keep going – he was just plenty used to sticking it out. It’s all he knew.

The path back was slow. He began working with swing coach Chris Como at the end of 2020. The only goal to begin – get Day swinging pain-free and injury-free.

“We’ve been trying to play the long game with all of this,” Como said. “Set him up to play a long, long time.”

That worked to start with – Day played in 22 events in 2021 and 19 events in 2022 – but the results weren’t there. He barely cracked the top-125 of the FedExCup in both seasons. He recorded more missed cuts than top-25 finishes. For a typical TOUR veteran, keeping one’s card is nothing to be disappointed in. For Day, the former No. 1 player in the world who once won seven times in 17 starts, it was hardly a success.

Day says the swing is still a work in progress, but since last fall, the pieces have begun to fall into place. Day and Como worked diligently to increase the mobility in his hips, eliminate early extension and relieve some pressure from his lower back. They’ve worked to shallow out his swing to eliminate some “wipey fades” and make him more comfortable attacking the ball.

“It’s not fully in there yet,” Como said. “Some days are better than others.”

This year has been littered with more good days than bad. Day already has seven top-10 finishes, more than the last two years combined. He’s missed only three cuts and finished outside the top-25 only once in the weekends he has made. A win “felt inevitable,” Como said.

But each week he was close to the lead on Sunday, something just wasn’t clicking with the swing. That was not an issue this week. Day ranked first in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green.

“For some reason, I just thought that I was going to win the tournament. It's easy to say that now because I won it, but that's just – for some reason I just had this sort of calmness about it,” Day said. “Sometimes there are moments in your round that you think, ‘Oh, it's kind of not my time.’ I really never had that thought at all this week.”

That didn’t mean it was easy. Day began the day two back of co-leaders Marty Dou, Ryan Palmer and Eckroat. In his mind, he thought anything around 20-under would put him in a good spot. Quickly, he realized he would need more than that. He made it to 20-under on the 12th hole after he holed out for birdie. That put him in the lead, but he needed birdies on Nos. 14, 15 and the short one on 18 to close it out.

As he walked off the green, he was bombarded by his wife and four kids. His life is much different than it was when he won the 2018 Wells Fargo Championship, his last win. He’s no longer at the top of the golf world. This win is a start, but he’s the first one to tell you he’s got a long way to go before he’s dominating again. From a personal perspective, his family has grown. They’re expecting another child again in a few months. It’s also missing a key figure – his mother, Dening. This was his first win since she passed away in 2022.

The only time Day got emotional Sunday was when he was asked about her. The two had a tight bond throughout Day’s life. She was the one who raised him after his father passed away when he was 12. For as long as Day has been struggling with his golf game, he’s also struggled to compartmentalize his mother’s health. Dening was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2017. She was first given a year to live, then had a surgery that gave her five more years. She passed away in March of last year.

It felt fitting that his long-awaited breakthrough would come on Mother’s Day, with her name on the back of Day’s caddie bib.

“I know she was with me out there today,” he said, holding back tears.

Now a 13-time winner, those around him think this could be the win that starts a second dominant run of his career. Rid of the injury issues that derailed his career once before, they believe getting the first win was the only thing holding him back.

“The validation of sticking with it, I think, is something at this point that he'll take a lot out of, and when you're as talented as Jason, the sky's the limit, once the confidence comes through winning like that,” Adam Scott said.

“It’s nice to see and do this, because I think his game is in a place that he can go on a heater and run the table,” Como said.