Close your eyes and visualize. It seems to work for Jason Day.
Envision a preteen kid growing up near Brisbane, Australia, the son of an Aussie father and a Filipino mother. His father falls to cancer and the family buckles.
Money is so tight that the boy, now a man, remembers his mother heating water for his baths in a kettle because there was no water heater. He remembers, too, being a bit of a punk, quick to throw a punch or tip a can of forbidden brew.
See this boy look for trouble, practically panning for it like prospector, until his mother sells the house and borrows from relatives to send him to boarding school where, it’s hoped, he’ll reboot his young life.
Now try to imagine this crossways kid nearly 15 years later, and he’s the No. 1 golfer in the world. He is Jason Day and along with all the other joys of being him these days, he is playing for another $11 million or so this week at the Tour Championship at East Lake.
Seeing it, then being it, is big in the Day dynamic.
Like before every shot, when he seems to go into a mini-trance while facing that approach to a green guarded in front by water and on the flanks by sand. He’ll close his eyes, play the movie of the shot in his head, eventually the lids will flutter and he’ll get around to actually hitting the thing.
Day is just “trying to make sure that I’m 100 percent comfortable with the visual that I see, walking into the shot, being aware of my target but also being aware of the golf ball.” The tides may change and the leaves may turn between shots but, Day said, “The biggest thing for me is to not hit a shot until I’m 100 percent ready.”
“I always used to think that I needed to play quick because pace of play is huge out here,” he said. “And the faster my pre-shot routine went, the more terrible shots I hit and the slower I played because I’m missing greens and I’m missing up-and-downs.”
It’s working so don’t quibble. At one point last week, with Day lapping the field at the BMW Championship, no less than Jordan Spieth suggested he should be paying to watch such a spectacle, it was that special.
“What he’s doing right now on the course is something I haven’t watched or witnessed in my life,” Spieth said.
What he’s doing now is winning four of his last six events. He’s going lower in a major (20 under in winning the PGA Championship) than anyone should. He’s 101 under par in 28 rounds over the last two months and it seemed any time he was on a golf course, you dared not look away because that would be the time he’d shoot 59 (or less).
What he’s doing is exactly what he, yes, visualized as the impertinent 20-year-old who in a conference with Australian reporters declared: “I want to chase Tiger (Woods) and my goal is to become the No. 1 golfer in the world. That’s been my goal since I was a little kid. If I work hard on what I need to, I’m sure I can take him down.”
He’d absorb a little blowback on that one, especially during those times when he was too injured or too shaky on Sunday to back it up.
But what’s so wrong with picturing the peak and declaring that you are going to reach it? Can you really climb it without first seeing it?
As Day sat with the BMW Championship trophy Sunday in the interview room, about to take over No. 1 world ranking, with Woods three months from his 40th birthday and just off another back surgery, he resisted every temptation to gloat.
“I’d love to say I told you so, but that wouldn’t be very nice,” he said, and Day is almost obsessively nice.
“It’s OK to dream big,” he continued, choosing to sermonize rather than to chastise. “It’s OK to say what you want to do. And for people who don’t respect that, then you really don’t need to give them the time, because who am I or who are they to tell you that you shouldn’t be able to do something?
“I would still thank them because that was kind of the fuel that lit the fire for me.”
When Day broke through with his first major championship, the dominating PGA Championship performance at Whistling Straits, it was like taking the lid off a bubbling pot. There seems to be no containing what’s inside now.
“You get a guy confidence, you get a guy who has some wins and knows how to win and knows how to have the lead, regardless of who it is, it breeds momentum. It’s dangerous,” Masters and British Open champ Zach Johnson said. “Then you throw in talent like Jason’s and it becomes so much more.”
And when Day finally did realize the vision and become the world’s top-ranked player — five years late, by his own plan — he seemed to have a vision for that, too.
He’d have fun with it. As when someone asked about the three young talents currently elevating golf, he could smile and say, “It’s like Jordan Spieth and Rory McIlroy had a baby and I was it. I’ve got Rory’s length and I’m hoping that I’ve got Jordan’s touch.”
When the new world rankings came out Monday, Day called them up on the computer and took a picture of it with his phone. “Just in case I ever have to tell (son) Dash at one point, ‘Yeah, here, your old man was the best in the world at one point.’”
And, yes, there is more to imagine and to do. Just ask Day and he will share the vision:
“I’d love to win all the majors. Getting the career Grand Slam would be fantastic. To win as many tournaments as I can. I’m just here for this one purpose and that’s to try to get better each and every day and try to win as much as I can, while I can. It’s not going to last forever, so I may as well do it quickly.
“And just be nice about it, too.”
Close your eyes and try to visualize Day doing all this. Why, it’s almost too much, you might say. But is it really anything more than he’s already managed?
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