The act of prognosticating majors is a silly game many of us partake in because they never play out how we hope. Many of us picked Jason Day as the obvious favorite, with Jordan Spieth likely to be right there. And for a change, a golf tournament played out kind of like we expected and hoped.
Day's win is especially enjoyable because he's had so many close calls, works hard, loves what he does and has been on the cusp. That doesn't always translate to major success but what fun to see things play out before our eyes as the paper evidence hinted.
Doug Ferguson gets at the emotional weight lifted for Day in his AP story:
Worried that this year might turn out to be a major failure, Day never gave Jordan Spieth or anyone else a chance Sunday. He delivered a record-setting performance at Whistling Straits that brought him a major championship he started to wonder might never happen.
Day was in tears before he even tapped in for par and a 5-under 67 for a three-shot victory. He sobbed on the shoulder of Colin Swatton, his caddie and longtime coach who rescued Day as a 12-year-old struggling to overcome the death of his father.
And then came high praise from Spieth in the scoring trailer when golf's new No. 1 player told him, "There's nothing I could do."
Ian O'Connor at ESPN.com on how Sunday was the culmination of a life lived overcoming a lot.
Day wanted to tell you that he was 12 when his old man died of stomach cancer, and that his mother needed to take out a second mortgage on the house and borrow money from his aunt and uncle to put him in a golf academy seven hours away. He wanted to tell you that he was getting into fights, and getting drunk at home before he was even a teenager. He wanted to tell you that his mother used a knife to cut the lawn because she couldn't afford to fix the mower, and that she'd heat up three or four kettles so her son could take a shower in a home that didn't have a hot water tank.
"That's why a lot of emotion came out on 18," Day said.
Rex Hoggard at GolfChannel.com
notes the irony of Day winning at Whistling Straits, where his run of near majors began.
Jason Day came full circle on Sunday after having started what some were beginning to see as a misguided major quest at Whistling Straits when he tied for 10th at the 2010 PGA.
Five years after that first brush with Grand Slam greatness the affable Australian laid a Heisman on the field with a near-flawless round and then both hands on the Wanamaker Trophy, the 27-pound chalice that had started to feel like the weight of the world on Day’s broad shoulders.
“Jason played like a champion,” Spieth said, shaking his head at the winner’s consistent play with a hard driver off the tee. “I wouldn’t say I was surprised, but I was amazed he kept hitting the driver.”
As one of the most aggressive players on the PGA Tour, Day started the day two in front of Spieth and kept the engines on. He birdied four of the first seven holes but still led by only three.
He uncorked a massive drive on the par-5 11th hole that wound up 382 yards down the fairway, and when Spieth walked up and saw it he turned around and said, “Holy s---!” Day simply smiled and playfully flexed his biceps.
“I knew I was going to be playing uphill from there,” Spieth said.
Col Swatton has been on the bag for Day a long time and has endured no shortage of hours on the range, so the "blubbering mess" he
displayed was real, notes Stephen Hennessey at GolfDigest.com.
On a lighter note, there was some confusion over son Dash's gender, at least from NBC Sports personality Josh Elliott.
Here was wee Dash running out to greet dad. From The Big Lead.
As we discuss with Iain Carter, author of The Majors, the BBC golf correspondent picked a very good year to write a book about the men's Grand Slam events. Because history will look very kindly on the year. Even with Augusta being way too green, Chambers Bay too brown, St. Andrews' greens were too fast and Whisting Straits apparently defenseless (though who knows how anyone breaks par there!), the players picked up the slack for the governing bodies and delivered four very memorable weeks.
