Jason Day had just knocked his approach on to the 18th green to seal victory on a truly cathartic Sunday at the US PGA Championship at Whistling Straits when it all came back to him.
He had 250 yards to go to complete the journey of a lifetime and great sobs of emotion welled in his chest. He couldn’t stop crying. ‘That really surprised me,’ he said. It won’t surprise you when you know.
If you thought he struggled to hole the final putt through the veil of tears because it represented an amazing recovery from an attack of vertigo at the US Open in June...boy, you don’t know a fraction of it.
Day grew up so poor in Queensland, Australia, his Filipino mum Dening used to cut the lawn with a knife. She would boil a kettle five or six times to feed the water tank so her children could have a hot shower. His dad Alvin, who worked at a meat processing plant, died of stomach cancer when Day was 12.
Without a taskmaster at home, he went off the rails. He was constantly involved in fights at school and had a drink problem.
Is this really the happily married family man who stands before us at 27 as the 97th PGA champion? A player so good Sir Nick Faldo has already christened him the new Gary Player, to go alongside Jordan Spieth’s Arnold Palmer impression and Rory McIlroy as Jack Nicklaus in a new Big Three? A man so popular his peers couldn’t wait to tweet their joy that he had reached the promised land?
It says everything about his standing that Justin Rose, who finished fourth, interrupted his press duties to seek out Day and congratulate him. ‘I’ll be back, don’t worry, but this is something I have to do,’ said Rose.
This, then, must rank alongside the greatest stories golf has ever told. Talk about sport as the path to redemption. The only thing Day had going for him after his father passed away was a talent for golf. Alvin had bought him a three wood from the local pawn shop and built a makeshift putting green in the back garden.
And so it was that his mum not only took out a second mortgage but took on two jobs and borrowed from every relation so her son could realise his passion for the game and save himself.
‘I could never have expected to be where I am today,’ said Day. ‘I wouldn’t have been here if my father didn’t pass away because that door closed for me and another one opened because my mum and my sisters sacrificed for me.
‘I was able to get away to a golf academy and meet Colin (Swatton, his coach, now caddie and life mentor) and get my life back on track.
‘To have him on the bag at the first major win, it was hard. He’s taken me from a kid who was getting in fights and getting drunk at 12 to a major champion. He means the world to me. I love him to death.
‘Why did all the emotion come out? Just knowing that my mum took a second mortgage out, borrowed from my aunt and uncle, just to give me chance.
‘I remember watching her cut the lawn with a knife because we couldn’t afford to fix the lawnmower. I remember we had to boil a kettle for hot showers. So just to be able to sit in front of you guys and think about those stories, it gets me emotional.’
When Day first started making it as a pro he would stare at his bank balance on a computer screen in disbelief at the sums he was earning. It was at Whistling Straits five years ago that he notched his first top 10 at a major.
He led the 2013 Masters with three holes to play but bogeyed the 16th and 18th and watched Adam Scott become the first Australian to win the green jacket.
He had the 54-hole lead at the US Open, where vertigo and Jordan Spieth got to him, and also at The Open, where he left a birdie putt short that would have earned him a spot in the play-off.
You might have thought those near misses would affect him on the final day with Spieth bearing down on him, but it proved the opposite.
‘I’ve noticed a calmness about him since St Andrews,’ said his wife Ellie, whom Day met when he was 17. ‘He’s always said it takes him a while to feel comfortable somewhere. You could just tell he was ready.’
Spieth could tell. In the scorer’s area afterwards the runner-up and new world No 1 told Day: ‘I couldn’t have done any more. I left it all out there. You just put on a clinic today, man. That’s the best I’ve ever seen you play. You deserved it.’
It was indeed Jason’s day. A year that brought us one great major tale after another had just delivered the most inspirational of all.– Daily Mail