Golf’s new world order added another major champion to the clique that is Rory and Jordan when Jason Day captured the 99th annual PGA Championship at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin this past Sunday. Leading by two strokes as he entered the final round, Day held off playing partner Jordan Spieth and shot a final-round 67, the third lowest score of the day, to win his first major title by three strokes.
Spieth shot 68 to finish in solo second and record one of the greatest single-season grand slam accomplishments with a win at the Masters, a victory at the United States Open, one shot out of the playoff at the British Open, and a runner-up at the PGA. Spieth is now No. 1 in the world, recovering soccer wanabee Rory McIlroy gave a spirited defense and is now No. 2, and Day is the game’s third-ranked golfer.
Sunday was a day of poetic justice for the 27-year-old Day who had knocked on the door of grand slam events during the past four years only to come up just short. In 2011, he birdied two of the last three holes at the Masters only to lose to Charl Schwartzel, who just so happened to birdie the final four holes. He came in second at the 2011 U.S. Open although he just so happened to finish eight strokes back of McIlroy as the young Irish phenom won his first major. In 2013 he just missed out on the Adam Scott and Angel Cabrera playoff at the Masters. In June of that year he finished second at our National Open just behind Justin Rose. This year he was hovering near the top of the leader board at the U.S. Open when he collapsed from vertigo. The British Open in July was heartbreaking as his final putt on the final hole finished a foot short and he missed the three-way playoff won by Zach Johnson by that one shot. His victory on Sunday in the PGA was the 10th time he has had a top-10 finish in a major. Yet unlike some of his contemporaries, such as Dustin Johnson, he has had his fair share of major losses because of the great play of others. In golf, you can’t play defense against the other guy.
Jason’s emotional victory at the PGA was heartwarming when you consider the journey he has taken to this point in his career. He was born in Queensland, Australia to an Irish-Australian father and a Filipino mother. His family relocated to Rockhampton when he was quite young. His dad introduced him to the game of golf when he was 6 years old. From age 8 onward he started playing in junior tournaments and he had immediate success. However, his world came to a vicious detour in the road when his dad died of stomach cancer when Jason was just 12. He had a difficult time with his father’s passing, began hanging out with, as he describes it, “the wrong crowd,” and found his share of trouble. His mother decided to enroll him in the Kooralbyn International School where he was a boarding student. He initially resisted until he met up with the school’s golf coach, Col Swatton. Swatton was an old-school, tough-love type of individual who ultimately became not only Jason’s father figure when he most needed one, but also his one and only golf instructor. In one of golf’s most unique player-coach relationships, Swatton has always served as Day’s caddie. He was once again looping for Day at the PGA Championship this past week.
Day immediately progressed under Swatton’s tutelage and at age 13 he won the 2000 Australian Masters Junior. He was the two-time Australian Junior golfer of the year. He captured the prestigious Australian Boys Amateur in 2004, won the Callaway World Junior at Torrey Pines that same year, and in 2005 he finished second at the Porter Cup in Niagara Falls. He decided to turn pro in 2006 as an 18-year-old and had an out-of-nowhere 11th-place finish in the Reno-Tahoe Open as a qualifier. He got into the third stage of Q School and received partial status on the Nationwide Tour for the 2007 season. He won the Legend Financial Group Classic in Ohio and punched his ticket to exempt status on the PGA Tour for 2008.
He struggled during that rookie campaign of 2008. In 2009 he took that next step, had a second-place finish in the Puerto Rico Open and finished 69th on the money list. The following year he won the Byron Nelson Classic in Dallas and in June of 2011 his rock-solid play got him into the top 10 in the world rankings. There were all those close calls at the majors and in the spring of 2014 he won the World Match Play in a final-round, highly entertaining, 23-hole match against Victor Dubuisson.
In early 2015 he won the San Diego tournament at Torrey Pines, had the ninth- and the fourth-place finish in the major Opens, and showed his meddle by winning the Canadian Open the week after his close call at the British Open. Sunday’s win at Whistling Straits was the icing on the cake for a most glorious 2015 campaign.
As Jason Day stood over his 1-foot putt to complete the PGA Championship on Sunday, he broke into tears. He cried when his wife and young son hugged him on the 18th green. He was teary eyed during the awards ceremony and was the same during his interview with ESPN’s Tom Rinaldi. He had won by three strokes. He had shot an aggregate score of 20-under-par. He had recorded the finest under-par round in the history of major championships, which just so happens to date back to 1860. He had fulfilled dreams he never had imagined.
Afterward, Day acknowledged that he felt a sense of “accomplishment and relief.” He added that it was “The hardest round of golf I’ve ever played.” Yet he followed up on that thought with the statement that “No one was going to stop me.” Most telling of all, he alluded to his father’s death by stating, “If my dad hadn’t passed when I was 12, I wouldn’t be here. Sometimes one door closes on you and another one opens.” That last statement was a true testament to his relationship with Swatton who he acknowledges to be his surrogate father.
All too soon the 2015 major championship season has come to an end. The world of men’s professional golf is in very good hands. Tiger, Phil and the rest have succumbed to age and the new generation of Rory, Jordan and Jason now sit atop the golfing world. Along with Martin Kaymer, 20-somethings have won six of the last seven majors with only pure-putting Zach Johnson getting in the way. It also was the first time since 1999 that a European golfer hasn’t won a grand slam event. Finally, it marked the last time we’ll see the long putter or the belly putter anchored to various body parts. Only time will tell if this marks the beginning of the end for past major winners Adam Scott, Webb Simpson and Keegan Bradley. One year from now we’ll have Olympic golf, too. I wonder if it can match up to the drama of the 2015 PGA?
