MANILA, Philippines - In 2006, ESPN and GolfWorld described him as the next Big Thing.
Five years later, he was – almost. Although he fell short of his bid to become the first rookie and the first Australian to win the Masters, Jason Day succeeded in surpassing expectations from a first-timer in what has long been considered as the world’s premier golfing major.
While South African Charl Schwartzel took the hotly disputed green jacket symbolic of Masters victory with a never-before-done four-birdie windup, Day became the toast of the golfing world for his incredible display of shotmaking, determination, mental toughness and spunk.
“I couldn’t do anymore than I did out there,” said Day after closing out with a 68. “Adam (Scott) and I gave our best. Charl just had a little more. To be in the hunt to be the first Aussie to win the Masters was special.”
What made Day’s performance doubly remarkable was his competitive spirit. While three-day leader Rory McIlroy and erstwhile co-leader Ricky Fowler succumbed to pressure and Augusta, Day hung on, matching fellow Queenslander and veteran campaigner Scott’s 12-under total for joint runner-up finish.
Day once credited his “killer-instinct” nature to his Filipina mother, Dening, who, he said in a previous Golf Digest report, would methodically and ruthlessly pursue his king on a chessboard until it was cornered.
“She’s very competitive,” said Day of his mom, who met his Aussie father Alvin through letters and then worked as meat workers in Queensland. “If I was playing amateur or junior events, she would always tell me to beat them. Not just beat them, but to crush them into the ground.”
That’s practically what he did in winning the Australian Junior Championship, the World Junior Championship, and 2006 Australian Amateur Stroke-Play Championship. At 19 in 2007, he became the youngest winner of a PGA Tour-sanctioned event when he won the Nationwide Tour’s Legend Financial Group Classic. He then turned pro the following year and made the cut at the PGA Tour’s John Deere Classic.
He then became the youngest Australian to win on the US PGA Tour when he survived a final round and a last-hole near-disaster to eke out a two-stroke victory over Americans Blake Adams, Brian Gay and Jeff Overton at the Four Seasons TPC in May last year in a victory that netted him a berth in this year’s Masters.
It was also his mom, seeing the vast potential of her son, who sent him to a golf academy in Gold Coast after his father succumbed to cancer in 2000. In the academy, Jason would spent 33 hours each week, swinging his golf clubs and aiming for the green.
One day, he found an interesting biography of a fellow Asian-American golfer who was considered a golf prodigy as a teenager: Tiger Woods.
“He’s influenced my life dramatically. He’s the one big reason I started practicing harder. He’s the one reason I started playing this tour. If it wasn’t for him, I’d be back home in Australia, and not even playing golf,” Jason said in a separate article on the Register-Guard.
Like Woods, Day has a mother of Asian descent who imbued her son with a killer instinct.
But whether the Fil-Aussie can emulate Woods in more tangible matters will depend on whether his skills can match his bravado.
“I want to become No. 1 in the world. I was taught in my life, by my parents, that you don’t get anywhere without working hard,” he said.