MONTREAL — Jason Day, maybe a second or so after contact, raised his right hand, clenched his fist and flashed his teeth. He knew where his ball was heading.
But he readily admits it could’ve gone any which way.
“Yeah, I don’t want to hit the shot again,” Day said.
Can’t blame him. No mulligans needed, though. Friday, during Day 2 play of the Presidents Cup, Day was in a Royal Montreal pickle. On the par-4 18th, he was over the green, about 50 feet from the hole, after his International group’s second stroke in the alternate-shot format. The path home was up a slope, then downhill. He lie was wet, he said. The grass was cabbage. A few hundred new friends encased him. But then Day fished out his rock, lofting it up, before dropping it down, and it finished 2 feet from the cup, giving him and teammate Christiaan Bezuidenhout a 1-up victory over Americans Max Homa and Brian Harman.
So exquisite was the shot that the normally reserved Adam Scott, in the post-play press conference, interrupted a reporter’s question on the play to weigh in. Day’d been told the shot was “really quite nice,” but Scott thought that description missed the mark.
“Quite nice?” he said.
“It was unbelievable.”
Here’s how Day said he pulled it off.
Practice swings helped. They tested whether his club would bounce or dig. But one thought was key.
“Then just pushing my awareness out as much as possible to my target and the flight,” Day said. “Then once you start thinking too internal, like at the ball, that’s when you start thinking a bit too much and you can get in your own way and think about — there’s a pause almost where you start to — your mind wanders. So I was just trying to push my thoughts to the flight, where I was going to land it, and just focus on that, kept on focusing on that.
“Then as soon as I hit the shot, I knew it was going to be good regardless. I think halfway through the shot I had my hand up, just knowing it was going to be a good one.”
From there, from right of the green, Harman failed to chip in, and the match was over. The win was part of an International Friday sweep, tying the biennial series at five points apiece.
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There’s more, though. Notably, a reporter missed Day’s debrief and asked a similar question on the shot — to which he was more than happy to oblige.
Again, he said, he focused on the drop.
“They were going to get up-and-down regardless, so I needed to hit a good shot,” Day said. “The only way to hit a good shot is to picture the ball landing — I tend to see the ball rolling, and then I add the picture to what the flight needs to do after the fact. I needed to hit it stone dead. I didn’t want to give Bez a putt for the potential win or halve or whatever it is.
“My mindset was just to make sure that — you know, get it pushed my awareness out, make sure I land it on my spot, but try and get the flight where I need it to be. I don’t know, it was weird, like it was one of those ones where you could have left it short of the green pretty quick or get something firing.
“Yeah, I think the biggest thing was just making sure that my awareness was not right at the ball, it was out at the target, and try and not let or attach myself to any thoughts that would come through my mind because it’s pretty easy. I’ve got a ton of people standing behind me. I can see the guys, the American side is sitting pretty good on the other side.
“But just trusting in that process, that’s kind of how it happened, and I feel very fortunate for the opportunity to be able to hit a shot like that under those conditions because what we’re doing right now, playing in this team format is going to help us in the future playing down the stretch in other tournaments. So this is great experience for me.”
