Jason Day’s late cramming leads to fast start at THE PLAYERS

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Jason Day doesn’t like to work on his swing during the week of a tournament, but sometimes it’s important to break routine.

After failing to break 70 and finishing T36 at last week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard, Day initiated an extended session with his coach, Chris Como, in the runup to THE PLAYERS Championship at TPC Sawgrass.

It paid dividends as Day shot a five-birdie, no-bogey 67 in perfect weather Thursday. Day, the former world No. 1 and winner of 13 PGA TOUR titles, including THE PLAYERS 2016, was two behind early leaders Rory McIlroy and Xander Schauffele.

“A bit of a dramatic difference between my hitting from last week to this week,” said Day, who started this season with three top-10 finishes on the West Coast Swing. “Obviously, it's only the first day, but felt like I did a lot of good quality work with Chris at the start of the week. Drove it nice. I think that's probably one of the most crucial things is to drive it well here.”

The watery Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass can be a tough place to find your game. Day, who hit 9/14 fairways, was in the top 10 in Strokes Gained: Approach to Green, and was a perfect 3/3 in Scrambling, nonetheless seemed to do so with Como’s help.

That such an intervention was necessary was surprising. Day finished ninth at The Genesis Invitational at The Riviera Country Club, but the game got away from him at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

Enter Como, who also works with a handful of other players in the field here. He had already helped Day, 36, find his way out of a slump, the exclamation point coming with his victory at last year’s AT&T Byron Nelson, breaking a win drought of five-plus years. Their last-minute work at TPC Sawgrass was born of a long professional relationship and easy familiarity.

“I think I saw him like once in LA,” Day said, “but I didn't see him – I typically don't like to work during the weeks that I'm playing, and I hit it awful last week, and I didn't know what was going on. I lost a lot of confidence in my hitting. My targets were way too large. We had a two-way miss going on. When that happens, it's hard to commit to any type of shot.

“Just tried to work on some of the technical stuff that we've been trying to get into over like the last six months,” he added. “That's difficult because I've got to teeter on the edge of being a little bit too sore in my back … I've got to really kind of find a good balance there.”

Did most of their range work come on Monday or Tuesday?

“Yeah, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,” Day said.

“Tough to tell,” he added when asked how many hours they logged. “But he was pretty much with me the majority of the time … we put a massive session in on Monday. It was a good chunk of hours there. Might have been three, four hours, something like that.”

Day said he expected to treat his back with a post-round cold plunge and a session with his trainer.