Four years ago when Jason Day collapsed to his knees on the ninth green at Chambers Bay during the U.S. Open, the narrative was different. The vertigo he suffered there made him a wounded hero when he decided to continue playing on his way to a top-10 finish.
That storyline has been replaced with something closer to pity. It’s not pity for his golf game — he is still No. 14 in the world and has five top-10s in 11 starts this seasons — it’s for the seemingly endless physical misery he has endured to compete at the highest level.
Although he has withdrawn from only six events in the past six seasons, it’s the constant battle with his back that has made Day’s career feel longer than Lord of the Rings. There are dots on the timeline: his withdrawal from the 2012 Masters due to an ankle injury; his title defense at this year’s Arnold Palmer Invitational that only lasted a few holes because of back pain. But it’s not about any specific struggle or moment — it’s the accumulation.
The fact that he is only 31 years old doesn’t seem to compute.
Could this meandering expedition of a career only be 13 years old with well over another decade possibly remaining? The eye test screams no. Shortly before starting this year’s Masters, Day leaned down to kiss his daughter and felt a crippling pain in his back. When a chiropractor had to lie him down and work out the tweak just two holes into the tournament, social media ran amuck with observers who were annoyed that Day was once again left lying on the ground because of injury. These are the same people who criticized him for walking with his family at Disney World after his withdrawal from Bay Hill.
In the past few weeks, the constant agony of Day’s golf life has wandered into the absurd. He started blowing into balloons in an attempt to better align his rib cage, hips and shoulders, thus helping to alleviate the pain in his back.
“Long story short, I try to keep my rib cage down,” Day described. “My rib cage gets up and then it blocks my mid-back and then I can’t really turn, so I get it from somewhere else and that’s why my back flares up.”
The balloon therapy explanation came just before Day insisted that, if he weren’t a professional golfer, he would have gone into the military. Not on the front lines, we hope.
The rest of the world is simply fatigued from Day’s health saga, and so is he. Several times during his pre-tournament press conference at the Wells Fargo Championship, Day addressed health-related questions with more than a tinge of frustration. He would rather talk about golf, but how can you talk about Day’s golf without concentrating on his health?
“It’s hard. I’ve talked about this so much beforehand, but you come back, you have an injury and you feel like your world’s ending because this is all you know and this is all you do,” Day said. “You’re a professional golfer and this is kind of how you live your life, especially for me because I wake up thinking about golf and go to bed thinking about golf. I’m eating thinking about golf. So this is my life. Outside of my family, golf is it.
“Sometimes it’s difficult when you have an injury to ever think, ‘Is that the final thing that’s going to push me over the line to actually have to hang up the clubs?’”
Even as he sifts through the thick jungle of managing a high-profile playing career while trying to stay healthy, Day’s positivity is astounding. Given the significant injury history he has, it is fair to assume the Australian will never again play golf without being at least a little concerned for his physical well-being.
“I haven’t really trained much at all this year because I’ve just been so sore. Any sort of training will actually kind of aggravate my back even more, so I’ve just kind of stayed away from it.”
– Jason Day
It wouldn’t be far-fetched for him to believe the golf gods are against him. Even Ellie, his wife of 10 years, suffered a bad injury a few years ago when LeBron James ran into her as she sat courtside for a Cleveland Cavaliers basketball game. And during this year’s Masters par-3 contest, she fell and bruised her arm and leg.
Some of us would be wondering why we couldn’t catch a break. All Day can see is the path ahead, however arduous it may be.
“I haven’t really trained much at all this year because I’ve just been so sore,” Day explained. “Any sort of training will actually kind of aggravate my back even more, so I’ve just kind of stayed away from it. I’ve just been rehabbing. I’m in like the rehab phrase where I’m just trying to get through each and every week.
“But overall I feel good about my body right now. I’m very optimistic about it. You know, I’m just kind of rehabbing everything, seeing my guy every morning and every night and then I’m doing any exercises. It’s probably an hour and a half worth of rehab every single day.”
It’s an intense amount of work for him to continue the grind. The reward to this point has been reaching No. 1 in the world, winning the 2015 PGA Championship, reaching a dozen PGA Tour wins and compiling nine top-5 finishes in majors. It’s not a hall of fame career to this point, but it’s not particularly far away from one either.
He may get there, even if he is not in one piece.