Jason Day: From Hell to Paradise

He doesn’t turn 28 until November but Jason Day, who is fighting tooth and nail against Jordan Spieth for world number one honours (he reached top spot in September but lost it one week later to the Texan), has a very clear-thinking head on his relatively young shoulders. No doubt this is because his experiences in life have taught him to value what is truly important. What is now paradise was once hell.

Following the death of his father when he was just 11 years old, Jason’s life could have been considerably different if his mother had not taken a drastic decision at the time. But that’s a story we will reveal later. Now we want to focus on the sporting aspects – full of happy moments.

Day began this year in eighth position in the world rankings and on 21 September, after a spectacular streak of four victories in six tournaments, he dethroned Rory McIlroy from the global top spot. He thus became the third Australian, after Greg Norman ages ago and Adam Scott more recently, to become world number one.

It took him seven years to reach the summit of global golf, since making his US PGA Tour debut in 2008. During this time he has achieved more than 40 top-10 finishes and eight wins in official tournaments, and his worst position on the money list the past four seasons has been 16th last year.

Nevertheless, majors success had eluded him in spite of finishing among the top-five on six occasions, until the happy moment finally arrived in August with his victory in the US PGA Championship. Previously, he had finished second in the 2011 and 2013 US Opens and fourth in 2014; second in the 2011 US Masters and third in 2013; and fourth in this year’s British Open.

It certainly can’t be said we hadn’t been warned...

He enjoyed his first PGA Tour triumph in his third season, in 2010, winning the Byron Nelson Championship (and collecting $1.7 million in prizemoney) during a year that had begun badly, with several missed cuts, but which ended quite well, with five top-10 finishes including second place in the Deutsche Bank Championship.

In 2011, he failed to win any title but tallied 10 top-10 finishes, including those two runner-up results in the Masters and US Open. He ended that year ninth on the PGA Tour money list. The next year was an average one, with just four top-10 results and one victory in an unofficial event, the Wendy’s 3-Tour Challenge.

In 2013, he had seven top-10 finishes, and his best results were in two of the Grand Sam events: second in the US Open and third in the Masters. That year he also won the World Cup for Australia paired with Adam Scott, and was the leading individual performer in the tournament.

After that double triumph in the non-official ISPs Handa World Cup of Golf, be began 2014 with success in an official tournament, the WGC Accenture Match Play Championship. He also played well in the US Open, finishing fourth, and was second in the Barclays and fourth in the Tour Championship.

Nevertheless, if things were quite good – very good, in fact – before, this season has been more than excellent. He has won more than $9 million in prizemoney, half of which was accumulated in one single month thanks to his victories in the US PGA, the Barclays and the BMW Championship – the first offering $1.8 million to the champion and the other two $1,450,000 each.

The 2015 season, which actually began at the end of the previous calendar year (like the European Tour), started magnificently for Day and is coming to an exceptional conclusion. He was fifth in his first start, won his second event (both non-official events) and was third in his third appearance. In his fifth tournament, in February, he won his first official title of the year, the Farmers Insurance Open, and one week later was fourth in the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, before securing another fourth place in April in the Zurich Classic in New Orleans.

Against all expectations, in May and June he missed two consecutive cuts, both in top events, The Players Championship and the Memorial Tournament. Fortunately, he recovered quickly to finish ninth in his next tournament, the US Open. His following start was the British Open, where he finished fourth. Back across the Atlantic he won the Canadian Open, was 12th in the WGC Bridgestone Invitational and then came his victories in the US PGA, Barclays and BMW – with a digression of 12th place in the Deutsche Bank Championship.

Tough Childhood

However, the life of this young champion born on 12 November 1987 in the small Queensland town of Beaudesert has not always been a bed of roses. Not at all. A terrible tragedy marked his passage from childhood to adolescence: stomach cancer ended the life of his father, Alvin, when Jason was still only 11 years old. He had introduced him to golf when he was a young child and now he was left without a father at a very difficult age.

Alvin had been strict and the one who set the limits, but shortly after he died Jason became a problematic adolescent, with a propensity for fighting and drinking alcohol. He himself has admitted that he became an alcoholic at just 12 years of age.

His mother, Dening, worked all day to try to keep things going for Day and his two sisters. A Philippine immigrant, she was the key to her son not abandoning golf. “I remember her cutting the grass with a knife because we couldn’t afford a lawnmower,” recalled Day the same day he won the US PGA. “I remember we didn’t have a water heater, so we had to boil water in a pot for baths.”

n the midst of these financial difficulties, his mother made a firm bet on her son’s golfing talent: she took out a second mortgage on their home to finance his studies at the Kooralbyn International School, a boarding school with a golf academy, seven hours away from his family, friends and former drinking mates. The educational centre had the distinction of including among its former students the legendary Australian athlete Cathy Freeman and golfer Adam Scott.

“It was easy to stop partying because there was nothing to do except go to school and golf. There was literally nothing around us,” said Day. “So I was obliged to go to school and to golf. And I realised what my mother had done, and that I needed an education.”

A book on Tiger Woods that he found at the school – which spoke about a young Tiger who regularly played rounds under 70 before turning 15 – motivated Day to carry his golf clubs over a mile to the practice ground to hit balls at dawn. And that was where he met another important person in his life, the academy’s coach Colin Swatton, who became his mentor and “adoptive father” – and who remains with him today.

“I practised 32 hours a week,” recalls Jason. “All I did was go to the school and play golf. I had no social life.”

He improved quickly and a few years later moved to the United States to join the Nationwide Tour, where in 2007 he became the youngest player – 19 years and seven months – to win on the circuit. This second-tier tour provides access to the main PGA Tour, where he made his debut the following year.

And then, on 21 August 2015, this masterful cycle was completed with his victory in the US PGA. There could not have been a more poignant image than Day crying in the arms of his caddy and later with his family (he was married in 2009, and is the father of a boy, with another child on the way).

“Knowing how difficult it has been to achieve what I have achieved today, or what I’ve done in the past, thinking about my mother, my sisters, about when I was a child, a 12-year-old… I thought I had no future, in golf or in general… It’s just an incredible feeling.”