Jason Day targets world number one slot as he digests Major win

No standing still. Ever. As golf’s newest Major champion has discovered, the desire for more is insatiable. And, although Jason Day’s journey to a PGA championship title has been rockier than many who previously took that path, the Australian – his tears not entirely wiped away – looked at the giant Wanamaker trophy perched beside him here at Whistling Straits and earmarked more such titles and a quest to be world number one among his goals going forward.

It is how it is, that players immediately want more. Yet, there was also human perspective from Day, an acknowledgement that others – his mother, his sisters – had sacrificed so much that he could pursue his dreams.

This Major championship win was a long time coming, yet the manner of the win – a record 20-under-par total, something to which Day was oblivious until it was pointed out to him afterwards – and especially rewarding for the number of knockbacks he had experienced in the Majors through the years. Day was supreme in closing the deal. No fewer than seven of his drives were over 300 yards in the final round.

In the recorder's hut afterwards, Jordan Spieth – who had tried to chase him down – signed Day's card and simply said: "There's nothing I could do."

And those words from Spieth, the new number one, resonated with Day. As he explained: “It’s a good feeling when someone like Jordan, who is playing phenomenal golf right now, says that. Because it means that he left everything out there on the golf course and my play this week was just so much better, well better than everyone else.

Frustrating

“And that feels good to me, because I was the last man standing . . . In previous finishes at Major championships, I was one of those guys where I was so close and I wasn’t the last man standing and it was frustrating for me.”

Later, he added: “I’m hoping this is kind of a springboard for me to really do some fantastic, great things in the future . . . as long as I am healthy, I feel like I’m going to be there a long time. I still want to accomplish that number one goal of mine, which is to be the best player in the world. I’m still motivated and still very hungry for that, even after this win. Stuff like this is just the icing on the top of the cake, when you work so hard and being able to achieve something like this.”

Day’s story is one less ordinary. His father – who introduced him to golf – died from stomach cancer when he was 12, and his mother decided to scrimp and save so that her son could attend a school with a golf course attached.

All along the way, fate, it seemed, played a hand.

He met Col Swatton, who became his coach, at school and he became a father figure and the first member of Team Day.

He was a coach who would become his caddie and, as Day followed his career path through the Australian amateur circuit and onto the professional circuit in the USA, Swatton went with him and was at his side every step of the way.

“I wouldn’t have been here if my father didn’t pass away. And that’s just because that door closed for me, but another opportunity opened up for me. That was for my mom to sacrifice and my sisters to sacrifice for me, so I could get away to a golf academy and work hard and meet Col and work hard on my game,” said Day, who has a reputation as being one of the hardest workers on tour.

Knocked on door

Before finally getting his hands on one of golf’s most prized trophies, Day had knocked on the door and been rejected time and time again. His first top-10 in a Major had come at Whistling Straits in 2010 – when he was 22 – and, thereafter, he contended more often than not. He had three runner-up finishes (in the 2011 Masters and the 2011 and 2013 US Opens) and twice this year had been in contention.

In the US Open at Chambers Bay he suffered from benign positional vertigo but finished tied-ninth and, at the Open at St Andrews, he was, like Spieth, a shot out of a play-off in fourth.

“The biggest thing that prepares you for something like this is just the sheer experience of failure, looking at failure not as a negative but as a positive, knowing that you can learn from anything, even if it’s bad or good. And that really gets you mentally tough,” said Day.

So, this was overdue. But how many others have said that down the years without getting their rewards? Colin Montgomerie? Sergio Garcia? Dustin Johnson even? Others too.

Day's time came on Sunday and the widespread acclaim from others – among them Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy – provides an indication of the respect he has from his peers.

“Some people get there quicker than others, some people make it look easier than others, and I’m just glad that it’s finally happened, because it was kind of wearing on me a little bit. It doesn’t help the media, hearing about it all the time. But I’m glad to take my name off that list [of best player never to win a Major] and move forward from here.

“As long as I keep working on those things and get the process right, I know that there’s going to be plenty of these to hold as long as I really am feeling motivated and I want it more than anyone else. That’s kind of where you get that free will to go out there and just let everything fly out there on the golf course. And that’s from all the hard work that I put in before tournaments,” said Day.