Jason Day bounces back from illness at FedEx St Jude
Jason Day – file photo PGA of America
Jason Day has bounced back from his withdrawal at last week’s Wyndham Championship to open with a round of 65 in the opening event of the FedEx Cup Playoffs the FedEx St Jude Championship at the TPC Southwind in Memphis.
Day began the Playoffs in 113th position in the FedEx Cup standings and needs a good week (perhaps a top ten or better) if he is to advance to next week’s BMW event in Delaware where the leading 70 will tee it up.
Day’s outstanding career has been plagued by injury and illness throughout but while the illness he suffered last week was enough to force his withdrawal from that event, he was able to recover in time to tee it up today.
“I’m just tired,” said Day referring to the lingering effects of last week’s flu like illness.
“I got a fever on Friday morning and I just knew I wasn’t going to be able to go. Over the weekend I felt great. Unfortunately, it was just one of those weird kind of like a flu or something like that, I guess. But I feel good now. I’m just going to kind of take it easy the rest of the day.
“I don’t feel like I needed to do anything today to kind of build on for tomorrow, I feel like everything’s pretty solid. I’ve just got to kind of stick to the game plan that I come up with in my head and if that doesn’t work out, just keep grinding.
“I mean, I felt like I was working on a lot of good momentum going into especially last week, from kind of Rocket Mortgage on. Felt like the game was starting to show a lot of good signs, which was nice, not only from, you know, tee to green, but also on the greens.
“I don’t know, it’s hard. Like you’re always just trying like to just blend everything together and hopefully it will click. I’m not getting too excited about anything right now, just got to stay patient as much as I can because the more I start thinking about outcome and being able to get into next week, it just does nothing for me, or at least anything positive for me.
“It actually gives you more anxiety and a lot of other stuff that comes along with it. Yeah, I feel pretty good about the opening round and looking forward to the rest of the week.”
Day leads the Australians although Adam Scott has also begun well with a round of 66, Cameron Davis and Cameron Smith (67), Marc Leishman 69 and Lucas Herbert 73.
New Zealand’s Danny Lee had 72.
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