AUSTIN, Texas — Jason Day’s been around the block.
Several blocks, in fact.
At 35 years old, the mature native Australian admittedly didn’t always know what was coming next and doesn’t truly know now.
But he’s come to grips with it some uncertainty, is braced for it and, in fact, is welcoming it.
He calls it “an interesting journey.”
Rewarding, too. And not just because of $53 million in golf paydays.
It’s been a journey that’s taken him to the highest of highs with both a PGA Championship and the Players Championship along with 10 other victories on the PGA Tour and included a few lows like an extended time off with severe back pain and a long drought between wins that has grown to five years since the Wells Fargo Open in 2018.
He’s a former No. 1-ranked golfer in the world. And he was as low as 175th in the ranking last October before climbing back to 37th.
He’s won this match-play event twice before, in 2014 and again in 2016 when it first came to Austin as its reincarnation as the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play and he’s in position to do so again after advancing from group play Friday by routing two-time major winner Colin Morikawa by a 4 and 3 margin.
Yet, he had gone 0-for-his-last-4 tries when he’s failed to advance out of the round-robin stage since his title.
He’s had 15 finishes in the top 10 in major championships, including four of them in the Masters, in his career, but he hasn’t captured a second major since that PGA title in 2015.
That said, the highs greatly outnumber the lows, and his compelling journey may yet return him to golf’s mountaintop. He’s placed in the top 10 in four of his last five events, including a fifth at the WM Phoenix Open, as well as a tie for 19th at the Players.
“When I got to No. 1 in the world back in ’15, I enjoyed the journey getting there,” Day said, “but when I got there, I didn’t know how I got there, which is interesting to say because I had a team of people around me that would just take care of everything. So they just kept the horse running, and I was just like, okay, I’m going to run in a straight line.”
This time around, he said he’s taken a different approach and he’s happy with that decision.
He’s spent a lifetime around golf — maybe two lifetimes — and likes where he’s been and where he’s headed.
“At least I’ll kind of have essentially an understanding of how things are,” he said, “and where they’re going and where I want to…
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