Day had addressed the issue of his increasing tortoise-like ways in the opening event of 2017 in Hawaii when he boldly stated: “I don’t care about speeding up my game.”
Day’s agonising pace-of-play has come under increasing scrutiny and with Day being likened to former PGA Tour competitor, Glen Day who was nick-named ‘All Day’ for obvious reasons.
Of course, the Ohio-based Aussie-born Day is not the only one guilty of slow play but as the game’s current top-ranked golfer you would think Day would be the one to set an example.
Also it is not only officials and observers commenting on his ‘slowness’ and with Day revealing he can’t go to the restroom with someone, and this case double Major winning Bubba Watson, taking the proverbial ‘piss’ out of him.
But despite this ribbing from Bubba and discussions with officials from the PGA Tour, Day reckons he’s well within the rules regarding slow play as he reiterated ahead of this week’s Genesis Open at the Riviera Club just outside Santa Monica and to the north of Los Angeles.
“I think Bubba got me in the restroom one time, he said he’s going to report me,” said Day smiling.
“He said you may as well fine him. I said okay, it’s fine, you can fine me as long as I keep beating you. I was okay with it.
“But to be honest, once again, there’s a set of rules that the PGA Tour has. As long as you stay inside those rules, you can back off as much as you want as long as you stay inside those rules.
“That’s the biggest thing for me is like I wanted to be a lot more deliberate. Now, saying deliberate is not being slow. Deliberate is being a lot more ‑‑ I’ve been 100 percent in my process of actually hitting the shot. That’s not slowing everything down. I still walk just as fast as I have before.”
Day then looked at the assembled media in the Genesis press centre interview room and commented: “You know, I would like to think that everyone in this room would take just a little bit longer if they had a million dollars on their mind.
“You just can’t get out there and just hit it just because that’s what everyone thinks. Once again, tournament golf to amateur golf is different, but you still have to abide by the rules and obviously I respect the other players that are playing.
“But last year I felt that I kind of, you know, I think I had a lot more peer pressure and I’m like I’ve got to speed up play, but why would I need to do that when I played such great golf. I only had one time last year and, you know, why would I need to speed up when I know that if I keep playing the way I’m doing, I’ll still stay in pace but I’ll play some good golf.
“I’m just ‑‑ I’m still trying to work on things, being a lot more deliberate, making sure that everything’s 100 percent. But I once again respect the players, respect the rules and go from there”.
However Day is under threat from a different quarter in this week’s $ US 7.2m tournament hosted by the Tiger Woods Foundation and that will come from World No3 Dustin Johnson and red-hot World No5 Hideki Matsyuama, and with each able to go to World No1 with victory at Riviera.
It led to the 29-year old being asked if he felt any pressure as the World No1 and a position Day has enjoyed for a total of 51 weeks and thus making him the seventh longest-running top-ranked player in the game since the World Rankings were initiated since Masters week of 1986.
On Monday, Day went ahead of Ian Woosnam and is now just 10 weeks shy of matched the World No1 ranked period of the late, great Seve Ballesteros.
“Oh, man, being No1 in the world is tough. It really is. It’s exciting,” said Day.
“It’s a good place to be, it really is a good place to be. I wouldn’t trade it for the world even though it’s mentally and sometimes physically demanding because once again, you’re out doing everything, you’re seeing the fans, seeing the media, trying to play competitive golf and then you go back home and you’re trying to be the No1 dad as well. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s really, really difficult not to bring it home.
“I felt like I’ve really learnt a lot about myself over the past year being able to let things go more so and not really ‑‑ I mean, I don’t look at a thing on social media. I don’t wish to because the amount of negative stuff that comes out of social media is pretty poor.
“But to be honest, it doesn’t affect me when I see negative stuff about me because it’s not my problem, it’s the person’s problem that’s writing the negative stuff. It’s really their fault and their problem because it means something to them.
“So it is a lot of pressure but you’ve got to keep fighting and keep pushing forward because you get to No. 1 in the world, my whole goal in life was to get to No1 in the world, get to No1. Where do you go now, you know what I mean? You’ve got to keep pushing forward and trying to find a way to stay there”.
And Day will get a taste of that pressure over the opening two days of the Genesis Open competing in the company of Matsuyama and World No8 Justin Thomas.
