Jason Day reaped the dividends of an extensive pre-tournament session with coach Chris Como as he returned to form after an ‘awful week’ at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.
After a positive start to the season, which saw Day notch up three top-ten finishes on the West Coast Swing, the Australian struggled to hit the same heights at Bay Hill, stuttering to a T36 finish.
With the World No. 21’s coach in town, the pair worked together extensively to remedy the situation and it was time well spent, with Day firing a bogey-free 67 in the first round of the Players Championship to position himself nicely for the days ahead.
“I did a lot of good quality work with Chris at the start of the week,” Day explained after Thursday’s action. “I typically don’t like to work during the weeks that I’m playing but I hit it awful last week, and I didn’t know what was going on.
“I lost a lot of confidence in my hitting. My targets were way too large. We had a two-way miss going on. When that happens, it’s hard to commit to any type of shot.
“Just tried to work on some of the technical stuff that we’ve been trying to get into over the last six months. That’s difficult because I’ve got to teeter on the edge of being a little bit too sore in my back … I’ve got to really kind of find a good balance there. I feel like I found a nice balance.”
Day has history at this tournament, storming to a four-shot victory to claim the title back in 2016. But health issues and injuries saw him tumble down the rankings before his partnership with Como helped drag him out of his slump.
Jason Day won the Players Championship in 2016
(Image credit: Getty Images)
The 36-year-old broke his five-year winless run at the AT&T Byron Nelson in May last year but acknowledged that things will have to be different this time if he is to win the PGA Tour’s headline event for a second time at TPC Sawgrass.
“The tournament went from May to March, so that was a bit of a change,” Day said. “The style of the golf course we used to play in May was totally different compared to now.
“I hit a lot more drivers off the tees. It’s a lot more important, super important to hit fairways now, whereas before you’d miss a fairway you’d be like, ‘It’s not too bad, I can run something up, and it’s no problem’.
“Things play a little bit softer now and they’re very thick out of the rough. So yeah, the style of the game is different”
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