Jason Day goes into the weekend of the Wells Fargo Championship in sole lead. Excerpts from an interview:
Jason, do you welcome tough conditions for the weekend?
Jason Day: Yeah, I actually do. I’ve always kind of liked U.S. Open formats in regards to how tough the golf course is. You kind of have to grind it out. Obviously typically when you have tough conditions, long golf courses, tough conditions, thick rough, the guys that are playing well, they kind of usually find their way towards the top.
Now, granted, I’m coming off some nice play at Zurich, so I’ve got some confidence there. It’s nice to be able to get in at 10 under through two rounds, especially with what kind of weather we’ve got coming in on the weekend. I’m looking forward to it. It’s nice to be back in the mix, nice to be leading. It’s still two more days left, so I can’t get too far ahead of myself.
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Do these conditions make you focus even more than you normally would if it was nice weather?
Jason: You have to. As I said to Rex, earlier it does widen the fairways, widens the greens a lot, but they really didn’t shorten the course all that much today. I hit more longer clubs today than I did yesterday. I felt like I had maybe a handful of 4-irons and 5-irons out there today and luckily enough I hit the majority of those close.
But yeah, when you have conditions like this, it’s really hard to commit to a shot because you’re going in there and you’re doing it kind of a lot quicker than your normal pre-shot routine, so you have to force yourself to hit the shot and trust that. Some of the iron shots that went left today, just a little quick in the transition, didn’t kind of wait for it. I kind of worked it out and found my way on the back side.
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What do you need to keep doing well and what do you need to do better, do you think?
Jason: I think from what I hear, I hear tomorrow’s worse than today in regards to the weather. I’ve just got to try and be as patient as possible. I feel like the swing itself is in a nice spot, just be patient with it and just go out and try and hit the ball and find it again, hit it again. I’d like to say hit every green, hit every fairway, but that’s just not doable here.
Yesterday you gave yourself a pat on your back with your round. You backed that up today. How does that help your confidence heading into the weekend and even continuing on through the season?
Jason: Yeah, it was nice to get this round under my belt in these conditions. All the work that I put in kind of in the offseason, off weeks, it’s starting to show a lot of signs and I’m finding a lot of confidence in that swing. Every now and then it kind of falls back to some of the old stuff, but big thing for me is just to not kind of panic and just take a step back and go through my shots and try and trust it the best I can and if I can do that, hopefully I’m somewhere, if not leading come Sunday.
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Jason, what did it mean to play as well as did you at the Farmers after not having been in it for a while and you stuck in there and actually hit maybe the shot of the tournament there on Sunday?
Jason: Yeah, I was kind of — you know, I guess kind of mid transformation from one swing with the iron to the other, and obviously, like I said yesterday, the driver swing is not where it needs to be, but it’s getting better each and every time I get to work on it. I think if I was going to go back there, if I was right now and I went back there, I’d try and find a little bit more creativity with my shots going into the greens and all that stuff. I’ve definitely come leaps and bounds since then. I remember a year and a half ago I put two tees between either side of my putter and I couldn’t stroke it between the two tees. I was more concerned about the putting more so than the actual swing itself. It was nice to get off to a good start at Torrey. Unfortunately, I kind of hit a bit of a — I lost a little bit of momentum with kind of my mum passing away and all that stuff. Finally finding my footing again is nice.
