PGA Tour
Muirfield Village Golf Club bit back in Round 2 of the Memorial as most of the players at the top of the leaderboard backed up in the second round. Numerous players felt the green speeds were equal to Augusta National -- possibly reaching as high as 15 on the Stimpmeter. Tiger, who is driving the ball well with 25 of 28 fairways hit, has struggled with putting and hitting greens in regulation. He posted a 2-over round of 74 Friday and now sits at 1 under heading into the final 36 holes.
Jason Day is T7, on 140, only three strokes off the lead and three in front of Tiger.
But Woods is a much, much bigger part of the Jason Day story than one sunny afternoon at Muirfield Village. Woods entered Day's life at age 14. The young Queensland resident read a biography of Woods and suddenly had all the motivation he needed. He began rising every day at 5 a.m. to practice, practice, practice. School would interrupt the routine, but it couldn't stop it; when school let out, the practice routine continued.
His goal was to "get to (Woods') level at each age" and take "the No. 1 spot from him" at some point; the fact that he actually had the nerve to say that might have caused a plague of locusts. And even if it hasn't happened yet, it can't hurt to give him a little time.
At 19, Day became the youngest winner of a PGA-sanctioned event by shooting four rounds in the 60s to win the Nationwide Tour's Legend Financial Group Classic in Cleveland. Last year, he made the cut in 14 of 29 PGA Tour events and had two top-10 finishes, not quite meeting his goal of two wins to match Woods' total in 1996. Last month, he tied for second in the Puerto Rico Open. Last week, he missed the three-man playoff at the Crowne Plaza Invitational by one stroke and finished fourth. It's beginning to look like a tred.
"I feel comfortable out there now," he said. "I'm just working at it slowly, and it's coming along nicely."
There are elements to Day's story that might have been penned by a novelist, yet all of it is true. He started playing golf at 6, with a 3-wood that his father rescued from a trash heap. He was so poor growing up that his school clothes one year came from the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, all that could be crammed into one bag for $5.
When Day was 14 and playing a practice round with Greg Norman and Adam Scott, agent Bud Martin saw him and surmised that he was the most talented player of the three. Martin became his agent.
Day and Woods have some things in common. Both are 6 feet 1. Both are multiethnic; Day's mother is Filipino and his late father was Australian. Both have a polished short game that can erase their mistakes of aggression.
Day would seem to have the bravado to someday take on Woods -- "If there's a gap in a tree, I go for it" he once said -- but there isn't a trace of arrogance. When you're told that he signed with adidas because Nike already has its man; well, it seems to make perfect sense.
Ian Davis, Day's manager in Australia, played with Norman in the 1970s and told Golf magazine that he's "a shot better a round than Norman was at a comparable age." Martin said "he could end up being the best ever."
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