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HP BYRON NELSON CHAMPIONSHIP

May 20, 2010

Jason Day

IRVING, TEXAS

THE MODERATOR: Jason Day, thank you for taking the time to join us. You shot a 4-under today. Jason's had three top-25 finishes this year and all of them have come in his last five starts, so he's been playing well of late. If you'll talk about your round today and we'll take a few questions.
JASON DAY: I cannot remember my round.

Q. It was a long one.
JASON DAY: It was. Started off, pretty good. It was gusty this morning, around 10 to 15 miles an hour, my front nine, which was the back nine, I started off with a good solid par on 10 and went through and birdied 11 and 12, 14, 15, and unfortunately I bogeyed 18. I hooked my ball into the water there, maybe should have hit a 3-wood down 18 instead of nibbling off more, but I played solid today.
I didn't make too many mistakes and hit a lot of greens, a lot of greens, and rolled in the putts, which was nice.

Q. How close were you to withdrawing? I understand you were sick this morning.
JASON DAY: I've been sick for the last four and a half months, since the Sony, and I've seen maybe six doctors this year, and they said that I may have had -- they said that I had bronchitis and may have had the swine flu. Then they said that I could have had allergies, and I was on all of these medicines, and it's been frustrating.
And then I saw a doc -- actually an allergist Monday, and he said that I had a chronic sinus infection; it's just been really frustrating. Now I'm on these heavy antibiotics that make me very sick, and I was feeling pretty sick this morning, and I really didn't think I was going to play this morning.
Warming up, I got out there and felt okay and then that rain delay helped a lot. I just kind of sat down and rested, drinking some water, and just trying to rest up a little.

Q. So which diagnoses do you think is right?
JASON DAY: Yeah, I know. I've got a bunch! I think the last one is the right one. I was on all these allergy medicines and I kept on coughing up a lot of mucous and green stuff and, you know, I was getting really dizzy out on the course and dehydrated, but I found out that it was a chronic sinus infection, and I've got meds now that are drying me up, which is nice, and I'm not getting dizzy on the course.

Q. Do you have allergies anyway?
JASON DAY: No, I do not, I've never had allergies in my life, and this year, everyone that I saw, they said I've got allergies. And I saw the allergist and he was looking at everything that I told him and he was like, "You don't have allergies at all," looking at it, he goes, "You've got something other than allergies."

Q. Has that lessened the amount of practice rounds you've played this year?
JASON DAY: Well, I pulled out of Honda due to me being dizzy and dehydrated and went to the E.R. there in Palm Beach and I haven't got as much practice as I would have liked to, especially on the course playing the tournaments.
I would come home with a week after -- normally I would start practice Tuesday and I would fly out Sunday, and I would get a lot of practice in, and I haven't been able to do that as much.

Q. You had three top-25s recently. Something is working.
JASON DAY: Yeah, you know what? I've just kind of lowered my expectations. I think I'm going out there and trying to play smarter golf, and I want to put myself in the middle of the greens and give myself a chance of making a putt instead of putting so much pressure on myself, because I give myself so much pressure I work myself up so much and it's mentally draining out there, especially if you have something going on healthwise.
I've just started -- everything is starting to turn around. I didn't chip and putt as well as I would like to at the start of the year, and everything is turning around nicely now.

Q. Now you may have the right medical diagnoses, maybe things will take off from here?
JASON DAY: That's what I'm hoping for. I'm just trying to take it one step at a time and work on a few things that I need to work on. I played with Lee Westwood at the PLAYERS the first two rounds, and it was flawless golf, and I was looking at my skills against his skills and it was just amazing that my golf game is not too far away from his.
Every time he missed a green he would get up and down, every time I would miss a green I wouldn't get up and down, and everyone knows out here you've got to work hard on your short game, and the person that makes the least amount of mistakes out there is normally going to win.

Q. Is this allergist somebody locally?
JASON DAY: Yes.

Q. How did you hook up with him?
JASON DAY: Our neighborhood is a really friendly neighborhood. Our neighbors referred him to us. He wasn't too far away. He was just in the Arlington area.

Q. Is it frustrating? Your career is young, you had this and the wrist and --
JASON DAY: I've had the wrist and the back injury.

Q. Is it tough to be patient to get past this stuff?
JASON DAY: Yeah, it is, it's very tough to be patient on being sick because it's just so frustrating. I feel like I'm healthy guy, I eat healthy, I work out a lot, I feel like I'm doing all the right things and I get hit with this. I know that if I keep on my corrective exercises and my exercises I know that my back and my wrist isn't going to hurt anymore, just due to what I'm doing in the gym, and I'm going to do my best to try and get healthy with this chronic sinus infection.

Q. Anything particularly you did to turn around your putting?
JASON DAY: Practice less. I practiced less on my putting -- actually, I would normally do like a spoke drill where it's like north, south, east, west, four putts around the hole and I would do maybe five, ten rounds from 7 yards and in. That was a lot of practice, a lot of focus, and I was focusing for maybe the first couple of rounds, and then I would switch off and then little things creep in.
Now I'm just doing one round of each putt and just practicing less and trying to visualize the ball going in the hole more than practice.

Q. Is that adjustment because of your health or just you felt like you needed to do something different?
JASON DAY: No, that wasn't an adjustment for my healthy, just needed to practice less, I needed to practice like I was going to play on the course. Now I practice with just -- I hit one ball to -- if I'm chipping, hitting wedge shots, hitting any shot at all, I'll pick a target and hit just one shot to that hole, because if I go there and hit one shot and hit another shot, my second ball is always going to be ten times better than my first ball because I've already seen the shot.

Q. How close did you come to pulling out?
JASON DAY: On the range I've got my umbrella, and I was warming up, and I felt awful. The medicine that I take upsets my stomach pretty bad; I was close to probably pulling out of this event.

Q. You didn't go to the trouble of packing up your bags or did you --
JASON DAY: No, no, I didn't -- I didn't go -- I was walking back to my car to get -- and I felt like getting in my car and driving back home, but I thought about it again and decided to come play, and it was probably a good idea to come play.

Q. How did you feel before the weather delay?
JASON DAY: As my front nine, which was the back nine, as it went on it got better, but I was still a little sick out there. But like I said, that rain delay helped a lot. I just sat down at a table with a bunch of friends and my wife and we sat there and talked, drank a lot of water, tried to keep up with my nutrition at least in there, so I wouldn't have any -- I wouldn't, you know, feel giddiness out there.

Q. Eating and drinking revived you?
JASON DAY: Yeah, and my wife got me the food, which was nice. She would shove it down my throat if I didn't.

Q. Was it tough to stay patient careerwise to get where you wanted to be?
JASON DAY: It's a slow process. You know, me being a young guy, and I realize how tough it is to win on the PGA TOUR now than I ever have before, and when I went -- when I played on the Nationwide Tour in 2007, I think that was it, I went out there and had a great year, won a tournament, had a lot of solid top-10s.
I took it for granted I think a little bit. I came out the next year, I didn't practice as hard, I thought I was going to win, guaranteed, and with that I didn't play as well. I finished in the 126 to 150 category, and I had to work harder the next year to get my card back, and I got back to practicing harder and working on the right things and, you know, I turned it around, which was nice.

Q. How does your game stack up now versus when you won on the Nationwide? Is it better in certain areas?
JASON DAY: I would say that I'm a much better player than I was on the Nationwide Tour. I've tightened my swing up a lot more than it was in 2007, probably not driving as well as I would like to, but I'm hitting it much longer than what I have in the past. I'm hitting a lot of greens and just everything is moving in the right direction. Mentally, tactically, physically, technically, everything is moving slowly, but it's just a slow process for me.
I'm in no rush. I just want to take it a step at a time, hopefully gain a couple of top-10s this year and keep securing my card and try and feel comfortable in my surroundings before I can go ahead and take a win.

Q. You've had people for years predicting great things for you; I'm sure you've heard that. Has that been good for you, bad for you? Does it affect you in any way?
JASON DAY: I think sometimes it gets to you a little bit. It probably adds a little more pressure, just due to the fact that everyone is expecting you to do well and win tournaments, and you think that you should go out and win tournaments, and you start firing at pins and missing greens and not getting up and down. It gets frustrating.
But, you know, just goes in one ear and out the next for me these days, but I haven't been playing well so you guys haven't been writing as much about me lately, so I'm happy about that.

Q. Can you talk about your par on 1?
JASON DAY: It started left-hooking -- it was a horrible shot, and it was on the cart path up against a fence, and I don't think any player has been over there except me today. I had to drop -- the nearest point was on the cart path, then I had to drop it on a downslope, had 205, and that's not a long haul at all, it's like a drive, 3-wood, and I had a 5-iron in there today, and I hit it in the bunker, and it was an easy bunker shot. I hit it on the fat side of the green.

Q. You hit a 5-iron from that downslope?
JASON DAY: Yeah, cleared the tree, luckily enough and slipped a wedge out of the bunker and hit it to 6, 7 feet and holed that putt, which was good to keep the momentum rolling.

Q. Was that key? You had just taken a bogey --
JASON DAY: I took bogey at 18, bad drive there, but I think it was a big key for me. If I'd missed that putt I wouldn't have gone on to the second hole and birdied that. So I was happy that I holed that putt.

Q. When you were talking about practicing less when you made that change, was there anything that was immediate that was different as far as being able to see the line or -- what was the thing that changed you being --
JASON DAY: I think the thing for me is not practicing less, just practicing smarter. For me practicing smarter I would be focusing -- I would have 100% focus on that shot, so I could see what the ball was doing and from there, you know, I could take it out onto the course, which was nice. That's with everything.
My chipping is starting to improve as well, and just in general my short game has been pretty poor this year. With me practicing smarter and working on the right things this year, it's helped me a lot.
THE MODERATOR: Thanks, Jason.

End of FastScripts

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