MONTREAL (AP) — Jason Day is back in the Presidents Cup for the first time in seven years and it all feels so new to him. The International team has a new logo for its black-and-gold colors. More than the uniform, he noticed a big change in the attitude.
And he openly confessed that he was part of the problem of going through the motions.
“When I first started out, I was pretty gung-ho about it, and I felt like there were some guys that just didn’t quite have the drive as much as some of the other guys,” Day said Tuesday. “When you’re not all working toward a goal, then it hurts.”
He said he lost that drive himself in the last two of his four appearances, and the record bears that out. Day went 0-4-1 in 2015 in South Korea, followed by a 1-3-1 mark at Liberty National in 2017, when the Americans won so easily they nearly clinched the cup before Sunday singles.
“You fast-forward to some of the other ones, and I didn’t have as much drive as some of the other guys,” he said. “And that kind of hurts the whole team environment. You’ve got to have all the guys pushing toward that goal of trying to win the cup.”
That was the biggest difference he noticed long before he played Royal Montreal for a team practice session two weeks ago, and when the International team arrived this week in a bid to end 19 years of losing.
International captain Mike Weir has been arranging dinners, and players have been competing against each other in practice rounds. They come from all over the world, except for Europe, and vast difference in culture and language no longer seems to be the barrier it once was.
Day is playing in his fifth Presidents Cup. In some respects, it feels like his first.
“The guys have gotten a lot closer — not necessarily the same guys over and over again, but I’m just saying that the actual team element, the team environment has shifted a lot since when I first started,” Day said.
“I’ve missed the last couple, so it’s nice to be able to get into a room and have guys very passionate about trying to win the cup,” he said. “Back in my day, maybe not a lot of the guys bought into the Presidents Cup as what I’m seeing now, myself included. I felt like I probably could have done a little bit more.”
It remains a tall task. The Americans have seven players returning from the last Presidents Cup team that seized control early and coasted to victory at Quail Hollow, their ninth in a row.
Weir has a record three Canadians on the team — all of them captain’s picks — and is leaning on big crowd support to end the drought. He only has two rookies, and only three players — Day included — have played in four Presidents Cups or more.
“I’m trying to keep them very focused and present on what’s going on. We’ve got a lot of young guys on the team, and they’re not remembering past defeats or anything like that,” Weir said. “I guess they hear it from you all and they read about it, but they’re not very focused on that.”
Day was caught up in the past, particularly his first two appearances. He said a low point was in 2015 in South Korea, when he felt the team wasn’t all in, and then he wondered if he had fallen into the same trap.
“If some guys aren’t wanting to push, then why do I need to push? That happened when I wasn’t as driven in … like Korea, I wasn’t as driven there to compete. I think that hurts the team environment. I can’t be there saying, ‘Hey, these guys didn’t drive’ and I’m doing the exact same thing come a couple years later.”
Day had reason to think he might not make it back, even though he is a major champion who once spent nearly a full year at No. 1 in the world. He was a captain’s pick for the 2019 matches at Royal Melbourne, only to withdraw with a back injury.
But he has rediscovered his game, winning the Byron Nelson last year to get back among the top 50 in the world.
And he qualified for the Olympics, another event that didn’t originally inspire him. Day skipped the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, and he was emotional wearing Australia’s green and gold at the Paris Games this summer, where he tied for ninth.
“It definitely opened my eyes when I played the Olympics and how much more it means to playing the game of golf and what the game of golf has given me,” Day said. “And then obviously see the guys (at the Presidents Cup) and how they are, that definitely opens my eyes to wanting to play as hard as I can for these guys.”
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