Day to forget in PGA dreams
JASON Day flushed away his shot at a second US PGA Championship with an ugly quadruple bogey eight after a “crazy” gamble that confounded golf great Nick Faldo.
Fittingly, the Aussie needed to take a drop near a row of portable toilets after his punt with a one-in-a-hundred shot backfired disastrously.
Day is always mesmerising viewing but he simply stuffed up on the tough 18th hole yesterday at the end of a mentallydraining five-hour round at the Quail Hollow Club in North Carolina.
The only hollow consolation was it not coming on the 72nd hole today.
If so, he would have been rechristened Jason “van der Day” as a nod to Frenchman Jean van der Velde, who imploded with a poor shot decision when the 1999 British Open was at his mercy.
Day lost the radar on his driver midway through yesterday’s wild third round but fought back brilliantly with three straight birdies.
With one poor decision, the former world No. 1 was out of it. Instead of being immersed in this morning’s final round shootout, Day’s tournament and majors season disappeared into the sunset because of his brain fade.
He signed for a six-over-par 77 and in that one hole crashed from sixth to 16th at level par, seven strokes behind American leader Kevin Kisner (67-67-72) instead of just three.
The trouble began when Day (70-66-77) flayed his drive right from the 18th tee into pine straw behind a tree.
Instead of a high percentage punch back to the fairway and a likely bogey, Day went highrisk by trying a low, hooking iron around the tree and along the line of a cart path. His landing area of concrete and trees gobbled his miscue in a hedge.
It meant an unplayable lie, a penalty drop, a flop shot into fairway rough, a putt lipping out and the wheels coming off.
“You are kidding me? (That’s) one of the craziest decisions I’ve ever seen,” said Faldo, the six-time major champion turned golf commentator.
“I’d love to know what he thought he could really do with that second shot.”
When the dust settled, Day’s final seven holes included three birdies, two bogeys, a double bogey, an eight and not a single boring par.