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PEBBLE BEACH, CALIFORNIA | There have been times, too many of them, when Jason Day has wondered if his professional golf career was ending.
His back issues, which have raged and relented through his career, are a fact of life. Day spends 30 minutes during his workout sessions blowing up balloons that help properly align his rib cage, allowing him to play.
Once the top-ranked player in the world, Day (above) had slipped to 46th entering the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, where he finished fourth, his best result in a year.
Day’s last victory came at the 2018 Wells Fargo Championship. Since then, his back issues have been ongoing, most recently prompting him to withdraw from the International team for the Presidents Cup last December in his native Australia.
“It’s hard because you compete week in and week out and you expect so much of yourself, and everyone does, but sometimes when you're injured, like for the most part I was all last year, it’s just, it gets frustrating,” Day said. “Not only do you get frustrated, you don't get the results and you lose confidence and then you're not almost pointing fingers, you're just trying to find a solution into why I'm not playing well and why is this happening.
“And you feel like your world is kind of crumbling around yourself, especially as an athlete who has played, who plays injured. And it’s not a good feeling, because there's some dark moments in there that you got to kind of fight through.”
Day, 32, said he has wondered if he can push himself to age 35 before surrendering to all it takes for him to play competitively.
“I've talked to my wife about this a lot,” he said. “I'm like, ‘I think I'm nearly done here, just because of how much pain I was in.’
“Then on top of it how stressful it is to play competitive golf week in and week out and try and live up to the expectations not only with yourself, but with what everyone else thinks that you should be doing.”
Then a week like last week comes around and Day feels more like the player he was.
“It's a good positive step forward,” Day said despite a final-round 75 Sunday. “I can't obviously sit back and be angry at it, obviously, due to the fact that I’ve been injured a good part of a year now and I haven’t had a really good finish in a long time. So this is a good positive step in the right direction.”
Ron Green Jr.