THE MODERATOR: Just an overall about that round today. We haven't talked to you this week. It's the first one of the week.
JASON DAY: Yeah, it's been a couple years since I've been back over here. The golf course is in tremendous shape. It's unbelievable how good the playing surface is, the fairways. I mean, from tee to green it's really unreal. The greens are so true. I don't think I've ever seen the golf course look this good in all the years that I've been playing here. So hat's off to the greens staff for making it unbelievable.
But, yeah, I felt pretty decent out there. I'm just not quite happy with the swing right now. I think I did a good job of hanging in there. Made an awful error on 6. I got a little bit of a bad break with the tee ball, even though I shouldn't have been over there. Then I did the smart thing, chip out into a sand divot and then kind of hit it fat into the water.
So it's just hard because you're standing there in the sand divot and you're like, okay, if I just catch this clean and it goes too far, you might chip is back into the water coming back down in that rough. So you're trying to do the best job of catching it clean and I just caught it heavy.
THE MODERATOR: What's your preparation been like leading up to this week?
JASON DAY: I had two weeks off. I mean, the year's been long and tough, especially for me because I haven't really played -- I played good in parts, but overall, it's been a bit of a struggle.
THE MODERATOR: What do you put that down to? You had a runner-up finish to start the season --
JASON DAY: To be honest, I would say that a lot of the stress and pressure that I'm feeling is because I can't get the ball on the green. I can't feel like I can -- I'm playing to miss a shot instead of playing to a target, just because I don't know what the ball's going to really do once it comes off the club face. And it's nothing to do with the clubs. It's all kind of me in a sense that when you're fighting something, it's really hard to trust it.
Luke, my caddie, is telling me, Put a good story on it, which means that, like, you're trying to tell yourself a good story to get yourself into the shot and visualize. And when you're hitting it this way, it's really hard to kind of see that story and tell yourself and really trust and believe in it.
So I think at some point it will just -- I'll get beyond it. It's really hard to be patient right now because I've had -- every tournament I typically have three decent rounds and one bad round that just puts me out of the tournament. I'm in the 30 to 60 finish position-wise. It's been a tough year.
Q. It's just you and your caddie. You don't have a coach, you don't have a teammate. Just kind of discuss the mental side of it and just what it's like to try to work it out.
JASON DAY: It's hard. I was on 13 because I hit it in the back left part on 12 and got up-and-down. I had a nice up-and-down. But I said to Luke, I said, Like, this is just really hard to try and figure it out while you're playing competitive golf, because essentially what you want to do is you want to go out there and just be dialed and just hit the shots and not fight yourself.
And I'm not the only one that's fighting it. There's plenty of guys out here that are doing the exact same thing. Some are a little bit better at hiding it, some are a little bit better at getting around the golf course, and some guys are struggling.
So the guys that are playing well typically know exactly what their tendencies are when it does go off, so it's easy to get things back in it order. For me, I'm still trying to figure that out. The hard thing is that I've always got to, in the back of my mind, focus -- make sure that I have some sort of focus on my back because if I'm trying to make some change for the better shots and the better overall results, I also won't trust it if it hurts my back.
So that's the give and take. I've got to kind of almost sometimes play around it and work my way through it, and it is frustrating to be patient at times because I definitely want to play better, it's just hard.
Q. How is the course playing out there today and this week?
JASON DAY: There's a slight 5- to 10-mile-an-hour breeze out there, which is tricky enough. The greens are bouncing like a decent chunk on the greens. So they're receptive from like a pitching wedge through 9- and 8-iron, I would say, they're pretty receptive, probably bouncing anywhere from zero to five yards, so that's great. Also depends on what kind of shot and into or down wind. But anything beyond that, they're landing on the green and going. So the rough is thick, you got to try and leave yourself -- it's funny, when I was looking at the yardage book last night I was like, okay to these pin locations I can miss it here. But then you sit and think about it you're like, man that's straight down hill, you're coming out of thick rough, it's just really hard. You got to be hitting it really good, you got to be dialed to be able to hit your shots. If you're not hitting your shots and you're just scrambling all day long it's going to be a very, very tough week.
THE MODERATOR: Before we let you go, I know it's a little off topic but can you comment on the recent performance of Ryan Ruffels at the Myrtle Beach and what's your relationship with him.
JASON DAY: Yeah, it's great. No, I think this is -- I mean, everyone knew how talented he was growing up as a kid. Obviously he battled chipping yips and driver yips, so he has come from the depth back. He's playing some really good golf. I think YouTube has given him a platform to obviously showcase how good he is as a player, what he is like personality-wise, but you can still that he still has a lot of good game in there. And he's young enough to be able to at least give it another shot. I think YouTube was an avenue for him to be able to help at least give him financial support while going through these lower tours, which is very difficult. A lot of people don't understand how quickly money goes when you're playing on a lower TOUR and how fast things go. So, like, for him to be able to do it, go through it, obviously played some really good golf at Myrtle Beach, that was his first real big tournament in a long time. I hope that he gets some more starts and then finds some confidence and then goes to Q-School and gets through that and then at least he's got some status, which is good.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports