Failure motivates Day to get name on claret jug

TROON, SCOTLAND — Jason Day is more motivated by failure than success, which helps explain how he reached No. 1 in the world.

And it all started last year at the British Open.

Day had never felt so calm in the midst of such raging emotion that being in contention at a major can bring. He had an innate sense that it would all work out in his favour, right up until the moment that it didn’t.

He had a 30-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole at St. Andrews to get into a playoff. It was right on line. And he left it short.

But it was that moment he realized he was good enough to win majors, and that he would win them if he had more chances. He won the RBC Canadian Open at Glen Abbey a week later and, two weeks after that, he won the PGA Championship with such a dominant display of power that he became the first player to finish at 20under par in a major. Six weeks later, he reached No. 1 for the first time.

“It was kind of, I guess, the start of my run where everything kind of changed my world," Day said.

The 28-year-old Aussie arrived at Royal Troon on the weekend and headed out to a links course he had never seen, playing in a wind he might not see the rest of the week.

The intrigue of Troon is that the shorter nine going out typically is with the wind, while the stronger, longer holes coming back are into the wind. It was the other way around over the weekend, and it began to shift on Monday on the first official day of practice with 25 m.p.h. (40 km/h) gusts straight off the Irish Sea. The forecast for Day has a little more clarity.

He has finished out of the top 10 only twice in his nine tournaments dating to March. What he brings to the Ayrshire coast of Scotland is more motivation — his last golfing memory was more failure. Day appeared to be firmly in control at the World Golf Championship in Ohio two weeks ago until he three-putted for bogey on the 15th hole, made a mess of the par-5 16th hole on his way to a double bogey, and wound up three shots behind U.S. Open champion Dustin Johnson.

“I learn more when I fail than when I win,” Days. “We’re not going to win every single one. Even though I don’t like losing, it was great to be able to learn something from that and turn this into what I would say a learning experience.”