Q. A battle out there today?
JASON DAY: A little bit. Especially through the middle part of my round, I had it going sideways a little bit. Three bogeys is definitely not what you want. Got just a few poor swings in the middle of my round. Kind of steadied the ship after that, which was nice. Finishing with three birdies is pretty good.
Q. Where are the greens at for you? Seems like across the board people are missing a lot of putts, feel like they're really glassy.
JASON DAY: They are glassy. Any time you put your putter down and you start sliding on your putter that's when you know the greens are getting pretty slick. They're changing color and you can kind of start to see the change in color. It's funny, the fairways, even though they're green, some parts are soft and some parts are firm, so just depending upon where you hit it you can get a bit of a bounce. The greens are, obviously it's a different type of surface. We're playing a Bermuda green compared to an overseeded rye throughout the whole course, so the course is playing a lot slower than the actual greens are.
Q. You had that little stretch where you made a few bogeys, I think you got within a shot or maybe even tied?
JASON DAY: I think I tied, yeah.
Q. But everybody's doing that. Do you look at it and go, Okay, I just got to --
JASON DAY: It's hard to think that, Oh, you're kind of losing it here, you know what I mean? Because you're trying not to project yourself forward and think, Oh, like, I'm losing the lead, and now I'm so far behind, and will I be able to make birdies and all that stuff, too. So I just, I mean, just being out here for so long I think you just learn to put it behind you. Especially on a course like this, you know that everyone's going to make mistakes so you just got to try and get everything kind of level headed, readjust yourself and then just start hitting some greens.
Had a really nice birdie on 11, that kind of propelled things forward for me on the back side.
Q. When did you start working with your old coach again?
JASON DAY: So I interest traded texts with him and calls with him at the start of the year, just to kind of see what he thought. Then last week was the first week just kind of going through 3D bio testing and then some SAM PuttLab stuff, kind of like the technical aspect of it all. Now we're just trying to got out and hit shots. The swing today was a little iffy at times, but I'm just trying to see my shots and trying to match the shots to what I'm seeing with the swing. Some of 'em are coming out great. Yesterday was tremendous. Day before was horrific. Today was like somewhere in between. So it's nice to be able to have my putting and my short game to kind of bail me out when I need to.
Q. Was there something at the end of the year that you weren't happy with why you decided to do that?
JASON DAY: I had zero idea what was going on. Even though I know a good chunk of swing stuff, it's nice to have someone kind of standing over your shoulder, like kind of guiding you where you need to be, just kind of keeping you in the bumper rails. Because that's the last thing you need as a player is to do it by yourself. Some guys can do it, because I think about it, off the top of my head, Bubba Watson, he's very unorthodox. I don't think he's ever had a swing coach in his life, and he's a very feel-based player, and I just feel like it just doesn't go too dramatically out of -- for him, he always goes back to like seeing the shots. I just got a little bit too technical over the last few years, I would say.
Q. How long were you and Colin apart?
JASON DAY: Seven years, I think.
Q. What was the communication during that span? I know when you stopped working together --
JASON DAY: We stopped working together and then it was just trading texts on and off. He was going on with his own life, and obviously I was trying to play competitive golf. We've got a lot of history together, so it's nice to be able to pull the old-school team back. I've got Jason Goldsmith who is my performance coach, we got to No. 1 together. Cole, we got to No. 1 together. I got a new trainer, an old trainer from my injury days. Luke is doing a good job on the bag. So I feel like I got a really solid team, everyone's kind of pulling in the right direction, which is great. That's kind of the hardest thing is you, when you're the leader of the team, you got to kind of nudge everyone where you want 'em to go. Everyone has to kind of pull their equal weight, and then if it doesn't work out then you got to look elsewhere. So it's nice to be able to have a team that really cares about what I'm trying to achieve out on the golf course.
Q. What kind of experience are you going to draw on tomorrow?
JASON DAY: I mean, not much. I think it's going to be a lot more difficult day today tomorrow. There's going to be 10 to 20 mile an hour wind out there. We all know how hard the greens are and how hard the golf course is. So it's just kind of survive, get close to it on the back side. If I can get close to the back side, who knows what happens. But you just got to try and cut into the lead through the first nine. If I can cut into the lead, get myself on the back side, hopefully finish the way I did today, then you never know what happens.
Q. You were like 14 when you started with him?
JASON DAY: 13. 12 and a half, 13. So a long time.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports