This marked the 12th WD of Day’s career, and makes it four straight seasons in which he has withdrawn from at least one tournament.
Former World No. 1 Jason Day withdrew from the Wyndham Championship ahead of the second round, citing illness.
The 34-year-old Australian has plummeted to No. 140 in the world and hasn’t won since the 2018 Wells Fargo Championship. He opened the regular-season finale of the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup with a 3-under 67 at Sedgefield Golf Club in Greensboro, North Carolina, and entered Friday’s play in a tie for 23rd place, six strokes off the lead held by John Huh.
Day likely will be eligible for next week’s FedEx St. Jude Championship in Memphis, the first of three FedEx Cup Playoff events. Day entered this week at No. 115 in the points list, with the top 125 advancing to the first playoff event.
Day has developed a reputation for withdrawing from tournaments, often due to injury as his body has become increasingly brittle. In the grand scheme of things, illness should be of less concern than a back injury for his ability to tee it up next week. This marked the 12th WD of Day’s career and makes it four straight seasons in which he has withdrawn during at least one tournament. He also withdrew ahead of the John Deere Classic last month with a back injury.
Day, who won the 2015 PGA Championship among his 12 Tour titles, entered the Wyndham Championship having made the cut in seven of his last eight starts. He recorded just one top-10 finish this season, a tie for third at the Farmers Insurance Open in January, while surpassing $50 million in career earnings.
Adam Long also withdrew from the tournament before the second round, citing illness. Brian Gay withdrew following the first round with a wrist injury. He entered the week No. 184 in the FedEx Cup standings, but is fully exempt on Tour next season via his win at the 2020 Bermuda Championship.
This video is a must-watch for all those golf swing nerds out there.
There are science geeks, math geeks, TV geeks and the list goes on. But there are also golf geeks (like many of you reading this).
Jason Day is a golf geek. The Aussie is obsessed with the golf swing, always looking for that one thing to click. Well, lucky for him, one of his best buddies on Tour (and in life) is one, too.
That’d be Tiger Woods.
Woods has worked with swing coaches in the past, but he has also been his own coach. Absorbing videos of his swing, breaking it down frame by frame to see what he can improve on.
Well, earlier this week at the Rocket Mortgage Classic, Day was asked what his conversations with Woods are like. He then pulled out his phone to show off his text messages with the GOAT. And, for the most part, they’re all about the golf swing.
Day, who won the 2015 PGA Championship among his 12 Tour titles, is winless for more than three years.
Former World No. 1 Jason Day withdrew from the John Deere Classic on Thursday before the start of the first round, citing a back injury.
Day, who won the 2015 PGA Championship among his 12 Tour titles, is winless for more than three years. He’s plummeted to No. 137 in the Official World Golf Ranking.
Day, 34, missed the cut last week at the Travelers Championship. He has just one top-10 finish this season, a tie for third at the Farmers Insurance Open in January. The Aussie finished T-55 at the PGA Championship in May, the only major he qualified for this season. He isn’t in the field for next week’s British Open at St. Andrews, where he finished T-4 in 2015, and a top finish at the John Deere was his last chance to earn a spot in the 150th Open.
Jason Day WD before R1 of the John Deere Classic (back injury) and is replaced in the field by Ted Potter.
— PGA TOUR Communications (@PGATOURComms) June 30, 2022
Day’s most recent withdrawal from a PGA Tour event was at the 2021 Memorial when he said he tweaked his balky back. Prior to that, he pulled out of the 2020 CJ Cup in Las Vegas, where he was in contention, during the final round with a neck injury.
Day has battled an assortment of injuries primarily to his back and has dealt with spasms that flare up periodically.
Last year, he started working with instructor Chris Como and made changes to his swing designed to take stress off his back. Earlier this year, he claimed to be “injury-free.”
Day was replaced in the field at the John Deere Classic in Silvis, Illinois, by Ted Potter III.
“You try to do your homework and identify guys in this case that were going to be successful as athletes.”
The corn fields adjacent to John Deere headquarters in Silvis, Illinois, typically are knee-high by the 4th of July. That’s how Webb Simpson remembers them as he returns to this northwestern corner of the Land of Lincoln for the first time in a dozen years to play at TPC Deere Run in the PGA Tour’s John Deere Classic, which is celebrating its 50th edition.
Simpson, winner of the 2012 U.S. Open among his seven Tour titles, is back in America’s Heartland to pay a debt of gratitude to longtime tournament director Clair Peterson, who is retiring this year, and gave him a sponsor’s exemption in 2008.
“I was elated because there’s so many uncertainties when you turn pro as a young player,” said Simpson, who graduate from Wake Forest that summer. “You don’t know which tour you’re going to be playing on, if any tour.”
The John Deere Classic grew in meaning to Simpson when he returned to the Quad Cities to compete a year later as a rookie and proposed to his wife, Dowd, the mother of his five children, the night before the final round.
“She knew the question was coming in the next few months, so I thought I’m going to get her when she least expects it,” he said. “Decided right by the river’s a beautiful area, I can take her to dinner, I can surprise her.”
Simpson’s caddie secured the ring and he dropped to one knee on a dock along the Mississippi River, which divides Bettencourt and Davenport, Iowa, and Moline and Rock Island, Illinois.
“I was more nervous about dropping it than her saying yes,” said Simpson, who claimed to be 99 percent sure she would say yes.
Fast forward to March at the Valspar Championship and Simpson told Peterson to count him in for his farewell tournament. With the pre-tournament withdrawal of Daniel Berger due to injury, Simpson, at No. 58 in the Official World Golf Ranking, represents the highest-ranked player in the field, but he downplayed any talk that he should be the favorite.
“A hundred guys could win this week,” Simpson said. “Just because the field isn’t as strong as other weeks it’s still going to take a really low number(to win).”
With the tournament going up against the second event of LIV Golf, the upstart league that has wooed the likes of Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson and former JDC champion Bryson DeChambeau, and scheduled between the U.S. Open and British Open, Peterson knew his event would be a tough draw.
“How many major winners do you have here compared to John Deere? It’s not even close,” said Pat Perez, a defector to the renegade LIV Golf. “The Tour wants to keep talking about strength of field and all that kind of stuff, the strength of field is here.”
To make matters worse for Peterson and the John Deere, several of the biggest stars in the game are heading next week to the Genesis Scottish Open, an event co-sanctioned between the PGA Tour and DP World Tour for the first time, which certainly had a detrimental effect, too. But none of this is new for an event that has rolled with the punches.
“I like to say we hit for the cycle,” Peterson said. “We’ve been opposite the British Open, we’ve been opposite the Olympics, we’ve been opposite the Ryder Cup and we’ve been opposite the Presidents Cup. So, our history is not always to have the top-10 players in the world here.”
What Peterson has excelled at is finding the stars of tomorrow and offering them sponsor exemptions into the field.
“I’ve kind of compared it, I guess, to an IPO, where there’s an initial public offering of this new product and there’s no promise that there’s going to be success,” Peterson said, “but you try to do your homework and identify guys in this case that were going to be successful as athletes, but quite honestly we also were really focused on young men that we liked and respected and had a lot of regard for.”
Jordan Spieth holds the winner’s check after winning a three-way, five-hole sudden death playoff at the John Deere Classic at TPC Deere Run on July 14, 2013 in Silvis, Illinois. (Photo: Michael Cohen-Getty Images)
Among those who benefited from a JDC invite include defending champion Lucas Glover, Jon Rahm and DeChambeau, who all later won U.S. Opens; past champ Jordan Spieth (three majors in all), Zach Johnson (two majors) and Patrick Reed, who all won green jackets; Justin Thomas, who just won his second PGA Championship, and Jason Day, who also won the Wanamaker, and is in the field this week.
“We gave him a spot as a 17-year old. He made his first check here,” Peterson said of Day, who returned five times. “Then he becomes No. 1 in the world. And it’s tough, once you’re getting into all the majors and the World Golf Championships, you can play all over the world, it’s tough to build a schedule and include our event…But here he is this year to come back and recognize that we gave him a spot, it’s exciting to have him here and that’s the value of the relationships, I think. There’s no expiration date on ’em.”
Peterson pointed out that for all his success with sponsor invites, his record isn’t perfect.
“I’m going to give you a true confession right now, because people have said, ‘Oh, wow, you know, you do a great job picking exemptions.’ I said no to Scottie Scheffler, OK? So don’t give me too much credit. That’s one that really kind of was a whiff. But I think he’s going to do OK.”
This year the list of those Peterson awarded golden tickets to includes Chris Gotterup, the Haskins Award winner as men’s college golfer of the year, Quinn Riley, a Black golfer who played at Duke, and Patrick Flavin, an Illinois native who grew up attending the tournament.
“It’s a dream come true,” Flavin said. “The John Deere Classic to me was always a major. It was a really big deal. Watching guys like Zach Johnson and Steve Stricker win, guys from the Midwest who aren’t overpowering people and I’m kind of a small guy, it was really inspiring to me.”
So is the local support for the tournament and the charity dollars it has raised – $145 million.
“To me that’s a success,” Peterson said. “You can’t judge the success of the tournament just by the strength of the field.”
A year ago, Day withdrew from the Memorial because of a flare-up with his back.
DUBLIN, Ohio — For the first time since his chronic back injuries began in 2015, Jason Day feels healthy.
“I feel like I don’t have an injury or like I’ve never had an injury, which is great,” Day said after his third-round 4-under 68 on Saturday at the Memorial. “It gives me the confidence knowing that my body and what I’m doing in the gym and what I’m doing with my swing is really paying off.”
It has been a long road back from a decline for the world’s former No. 1 player, an Australian who lives in Westerville, a suburb of Columbus. A year ago, Day withdrew from the Memorial because of a flare-up with his back.
Day is 3-under par after starting Saturday 1-over par. He made the cut with only a shot to spare. He got on a roll with an eagle on the par-4 No. 3 hole and birdies on No. 4 and No. 6.
The eagle came when he drained his approach shot from 142 yards away. What made it even remarkable was that his tee shot landed in a divot.
“Probably about a third of the ball was stuck under the ground, but it wasn’t my pitch mark so I couldn’t drop it out of it,” Day said. “I just kind of chopped down on a pitching wedge, and luckily enough it went in the hole.”
His birdie on No. 4 also came on a ridiculous shot. He hit his tee shot 82 feet left of the pin in the rough and chipped in. His birdie on No. 6 came on a 39-foot putt.
He managed only one other birdie before making a 7-footer on No. 18 that followed an 11-foot putt on No. 17 to save bogey.
“I caught fire early and then I’m sitting there going, ‘Man, maybe I peaked too early,’” Day said. “But overall it was a nice day. I played some pretty good golf.”
Day said he is generally pleased with how he is playing, though he’s frustrated that one mediocre round has tended to offset three solid ones.
“I’m optimistic about where things are going,” he said, “but I’m trying to be as patient as possible.”
Though Day lives here, he doesn’t play Muirfield Village regularly.
Jason Day, left, walks to the ninth green during the third round of the Memorial Tournament. Mandatory Credit: Aaron Doster-USA TODAY Sports
“Everyone says it’s my home club and it is to a certain degree,” he said. “But before this week I only played nine holes in the last two years here. Even though I live like 30 minutes away. I’m too lazy to get in my car and drive 30 minutes to a championship golf course. I’d rather go to (Double Eagle), another championship golf course 10 minutes away.
“But it is nice to be able to have the caliber of golf course that we have in our backyard. A lot of people don’t understand that Columbus and Ohio in general, have tremendous golf courses, and they’re like hidden gems. When people come out here, they’re actually quite surprised how good the golf courses are up here in Ohio.”
Bill Rabinowitz is a sports reporter for The Columbus Dispatch. Contact him at brabinowitz@dispatch.com or on Twitter @brdispatch.
Saw Rickie Fowler in this hat and knew his time was coming soon.
The PGA Tour is in Ohio this week for the Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village. Jack’s place has produced big-name winners over the last four seasons: Patrick Cantlay twice, Jon Rahm, and Bryson DeChambeau.
Muirfield Village is a par 72 layout measuring over 7,500 yards. It’s gone through a renovation over the last few years that included the resurfacing of every green on the property.
Among the big names, there are several players further down the odds list to keep an eye on.
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Frosty temperatures. Gusting winds. Unrelenting rain. A course so water-logged it’s mindful of a sponge.
Think of elements that would make you frown during a round of golf.
Frosty temperatures. Gusting winds. Unrelenting rain. A course so water-logged it’s mindful of a sponge rimmed with thick, drenched, punishing rough.
Now imagine that quartet of misery as a collective and you have Saturday’s third round of the Wells Fargo Championship at TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm, north of the nation’s capital.
“Just get around, literally, just any way possible,” Matthew Fitzpatrick said about his game-plan for Saturday. He did OK with a 71.
Most others weren’t so fortunate on a day the thermometer never reached 50 and the winds made it feel cooler. As well, the clouds kept spitting rain throughout the day, adding to the 3 inches of H2O that fell on the course the past two days.
Which, of course, kept TPC Potomac soaked, making for some interesting lies despite players being allowed to lift, clean and place.
Max Homa at the ninth hole during the third round of the Wells Fargo Championship golf tournament. Mandatory Credit: Mitch Stringer-USA TODAY Sports
“It feels like I’ve just gone 12 rounds in a pro boxing match,” said Anirban Lahiri, who shot 70. “You’re fighting everything, you’re fighting your body, the elements, the water, the cold, the conditions. It’s tough work and you just have to grit your teeth and kind of grind it out.”
After a dry Thursday when the field averaged 69.58 strokes, the players posted averages of 72.57 on rainy Friday and 73.67 on Saturday; that was the highest average relative to par in a non-major since the final round of the 2020 Memorial.
In the third round, only four of the 65 players broke par, including three-time Wells Fargo winner and defending champion Rory McIlroy, who moved from a tie for 50th to a tie for sixth with a 68.
The leader, however, is Keegan Bradley, who somehow shot 3-under-par 67 to grab the 54-hole lead. The 2011 PGA Championship winner is looking for his first win since the 2018 BMW Championship, which finished on Monday because of storms throughout the week. Bradley made just two bogeys.
“When the conditions get like this, I find a sense of calm just because I’m sort of worried about other things, keeping my clubs dry and my bag dry. Sort of keeps me in the present. I did that today and I just had a great time with my caddie Scotty (Vail). We’re a good team and we did a lot of good things today,” Bradley said. “My coach, Darren May, and my caddie, Scotty, are in my ear that these sort of conditions are good for me. When you look at the weather, the extended weather, as a player you get sort of stressed when you see this even though everyone’s playing in it, it’s silly. But they were sort of in my ear saying this is what you want, you want it to be windy and tough. I’m starting to believe them.”
Bradley is at 8 under.
Max Homa, the 2019 Wells Fargo winner who had the lead earlier in the day, shot 71 and is at 6 under. At 4 under are Lahiri and James Hahn, the 2016 Wells Fargo winner; Hahn shot 72. At 3 under is Fitzpatrick. A large collection is at 2 under, including McIlroy, Cameron Young (69) and Matthew Wolff (70).
“Six shots is still six shots,” McIlroy said. “It depends what the weather’s like tomorrow. I’d like it to be pretty tough. I know it’s probably not going to be as wet. It’s going to be quite cold. I don’t know what the wind’s going to be like. I can’t imagine tomorrow being any tougher than today was.
“You can’t really chase much around here because it’s a tough golf course, but like six shots is still a long way back.”
The forecast is for a rainless day. But the temps will still not reach 50.
Jason Day walks onto the ninth hole green during the third round of the Wells Fargo Championship golf tournament. Mandatory Credit: Mitch Stringer-USA TODAY Sports
It certainly wasn’t Jason Day’s day in the third round. The 2015 PGA Championship victor, looking for his first win since the 2018 Wells Fargo Championship, looked stellar through 36 holes and led by three shots at 10 under.
But he hit tee shots into water hazards on consecutive holes early in his third round, hit his approach on the par-5 10th into a swamp, made just one birdie and shot 79.
“I think I deserve a soda after today, maybe some cookies, some kind of candy.”
POTOMAC, Md. — Playing in the morning’s fifth group, Max Homa was shocked his threesome finished their second round at the 2022 Wells Fargo Championship. He even told his caddie before the round he thought they’d only play eight holes due to the weather.
“I’m just happy to be done,” said Homa, one of just 11 players from the Friday morning wave to shoot under par.
The three-time PGA Tour winner battled the elements to tie for the low round of the day despite heavy and consistent rain, signing for a 4-under 66 to match the efforts of Luke List and Chad Ramey. Homa now sits in solo second at 7 under behind first-round leader Jason Day, who extended his lead to three shots at 10 under after a 3-under 67 at TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm, this year’s Wells Fargo host while Quail Hollow in Charlotte, North Carolina, prepares for the Presidents Cup in September.
“Yeah, Jason and I have been talking about it for like two and a half hours, that we can’t wait for it to be done and kick our feet up,” Homa said after the round. “I know he’s got his bus here so he’s going to go hang on the bus. I’m going to go sit on my bed and I think I deserve a soda after today, maybe some cookies, some kind of candy, I don’t know. I’m going to kick my feet up.”
Instead of dreading the downpours, Ramey was embracing them.
“I just honestly try to embrace the conditions because I know there’s going to be a lot of guys out here that hate it. It just is what it is,” said the winner of the 2022 Corales Puntacana Championship. “As long as I can embrace the conditions and keep my mind right, I feel like I’m ahead of half the field.”
In 18 events this season, Ramey has made eight cuts and missed 10, finishing in the top 10 twice at the Puerto Rico Open in March, followed by his win three weeks later in Puntacana.
“It’s nice to be able to get in at 10 under through two rounds, especially with what kind of weather we’ve got coming in on the weekend,” added Day, noting how he loves to grind it out in tough conditions. “I’m looking forward to it. It’s nice to be back in the mix, nice to be leading. It’s still two more days left, so I can’t get too far ahead of myself.”
The former world No. 1 said something similar about managing expectations after he took the lead on Thursday, and that patience will be a useful 15th club with inclement weather in the forecast for the rest of the weekend. The Weather Channel is calling for overnight rain on Friday, with 10-15 mph winds and a 90% chance of rain on Saturday.
Day feels like he can get back to his old self. But can he climb that mountain again?
POTOMAC, Md. — Jason Day hopped in the time machine and took golf fans back to when he was the world No. 1 in 2015 on Thursday at the 2022 Wells Fargo Championship.
Currently ranked No. 127, the 34-year-old had every facet of his game dialed in on his way to the top of the leaderboard during the first round at TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm. Day began his afternoon with a pair of birdies on his opening holes, added another at No. 5 then went on a feeding frenzy on the back nine with birdies on five of the first seven holes to sign for a 7-under 63 and take a one-shot lead over Joel Dahmen.
“Yeah, I am encouraged. I think it’s a good step in the right direction,” said Day after his round. “I obviously, I’ve got to give myself a pat on the back because I played some nice golf today, but we’ve got three more days after this and I think the main goal is to try and focus and get yourself in a position where you can win. Yeah, good positive stuff today.”
In 10 events this year, Day has two top-10 finishes at the Farmers Insurance Open (T-3) and Zurich Classic of New Orleans (T-10) and six missed cuts. Looking on the bright side, his round on Thursday was his third of 7 under or better this season. Want to guess how many rounds like that he played over the last two seasons? Two. Hitting 12 fairways and making five birdies from inside 10 feet sure helps.
Day said he was “very due” for a win back in February at Pebble Beach and Thursday’s round supported that claim.
“I mean, there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff that I think about the golf swing in the morning, I think about the golf swing during the day and I think about the golf swing at night. There’s been conversations at 12:00 at night with (swing coach Chris Como) just because I have an idea in my head and a certain sensation and a feel,” explained Day. “If you’ve been around me at that time, you’ve kind of — it’s interesting. I’m obsessed with it.”
That said, the 12-time winner on Tour isn’t letting today’s success cloud his vision for the future.
“Well, I don’t know,” Day said of how good this new version of his game could be. “Obviously I don’t want to get ahead of myself because I know that it’s easy in the position I am right now after a good round to get ahead of myself and start talking where it could potentially go, but I think I’ve just got to stay as present as possible because if I can swing it the way I’m swinging it and have the short game and the touch that I have on the greens, I mean, I played some really good golf today.
“I feel like I can get back to where I need to be, but that’s a total decision up top in my head if I want to climb that mountain again. I feel good about myself and I’ve just got to slowly work on the confidence,” he continued. “The thing that’s different between now and when I was No. 1 in the world, even though the technique might not have been as crisp as it is right now, I had all the confidence in the world, especially on the greens. So that’s always the goal.”
“I’m one to play it safe, but I was pretty confident that ball landed above the red line.”
AVONDALE, La. — On the 16th tee box, Billy Horschel and Sam Burns sat just two shots back of Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay. The par-4 was driveable during Sunday’s final round of the Zurich Classic of New Orleans and Burns had a crack at it.
His ball found the water.
Unsure of where it went in, the group had a lengthy discussion on whether or not the ball crossed near the green or if they would have to drop it back in the fairway.
Horschel claimed that he saw the ball bounce first — which video replay backed up — before going into the water, and that would only be possible if it did so above the red hazard line.
Watch the full interaction below:
Billy Horschel and Sam Burns discuss a drop after their tee shot finds the water on No. 16. pic.twitter.com/4kYXbSscdv
“So from where we were, Sam pulled his drive a little bit and it was coming back,” Horschel said after the round. “Conversation was did it land above the red line. Well, I saw a ball land and bounce. From the tee box and everything, you really can’t see the red line.”
“The ball was six inches into the water,” Burns said. “If it lands close to the edge, it’s going to kick pretty hard in, but if it lands higher up it’s going to kind of…”
Then Horschel carried on.
“It’s going to take a couple bounces. From what I saw and not being able to see the red line and where the red line was, I couldn’t see below that from the tee box when I got up there, so I figured that ball had to land up on top of the red line. We asked TV and everything, and TV didn’t have clear-cut evidence.
“Travis, his caddie, saw the ball bounce. I’m one to play it safe, but I was pretty confident that ball landed above the red line.”
The pair eventually took their drop near the green where Horschel then chipped the team’s third to two feet and was able to escape with par.
