PGA Tour Major Winner Jason Day joined Michael on Course Record to talk about Hip Depth and his game

joined Now by former world number one a winner last year in 2023 Jason day Jason I appreciate you coming on I want to get right to it at 36 years of age you've got a lot of great golf ahead of you and now that the health is is where you want it to be and you're able to do some things that you might have been able to do or not might not have been able to do now do you look back and go okay 2016 was a great year for me 2015 obviously all the wins um and you feel like you can get back to that you can pursue that that world number one again that's an interesting question thanks for having me on Michael always good to see you um I believe that I can do that just because not only am I healthier now than I feel like I have been in in in the past um I have the experience of being able to put myself there the hard part is just trying to get over the mental hurdle of what comes with being number one in the world and the the stress and everything that comes along with you know being that guy and I look at it this way if there's there's three pillars in my in my life there's Health family and golf and if it doesn't positively impact those then I won't do it at all so um I have to kind of take those three pillars and if I can find balance between those three then I know that it'll best help me for success to try and get back to number one in the world so all good news so so then let's talk about the state of the game yeah um you you won back in in 2023 last year after it had been a little bit of a a period of time since the win where is the state of your game right now and do you think like you know what there's a wi coming around the corner here yeah you know I mean obviously that was it was a nice year that I had last year I'm still having a good solid year I'm currently 12th on the FedEx right now which is like a sneaky 12 you know I I just feel like I've been playing some good golf I think probably had a little bit more talk about my clothing that I've been wearing than than the actual game I've been playing but that's okay I'm okay with that um I I definitely think the game is there to win consistently I'm not quite sure just because I'm trying to work my way out of some bad and poor iron play that I've that I've had and I think um my short game is really really solid my putting's really solid my driving's pretty decent too like I think I'm averaging like 66% of Fairways and about 300 plus yards um of uh of of you know my driving distance so like I just got to piece the IR and play together and Grant I feel like some of that is a little bit of Technical and some of it is uh mental as well so you've been working on this with Chris KO who obviously is a wonderful coach coach of Xander Schley amongst others what is it that you're doing that um like as you attack that part of your game your iron play what is it that you're working on that's going to allow you to improve that iron play and what is what is causing do you think the poor iron play I would say that we're still working on trying to um kind of keep it's kind of hard to explain but I'm G to stand up and try and explain it to so so you can only see my head you can't see my head but essentially what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to almost have like this imaginary leg pole here so as I'm coming through um I'm not my right hip does not really hit that pole I tend to go like this like that and I stand up which gets the club like kind of late and like you know underneath and what I'm what I'm trying to do is be able to keep the hips kind of back which gets me more in more in angle but then get a lot of my tilt from like the ribs like the upper ribs up you know because essentially when you start to stand up and early extend that's when you get the side crunch and you get lateral um I'm trying to get a lot of my movement through my upper ribs um essentially what tiger did back in the day yeah this is the most difficult thing to do especially when you've had a back injury is to go let's move this let's get kind of deeper in the hips and get this turned out of the way but then keep this a little bit more square and get more tilt this way that's very difficult to do do you feel like now that where you are with your body where you are with your understanding of your golf swing which is clearly at at the the elite level and Chris is doing a wonderful job getting you to understand motion but when you're starting to see your shots now are they starting to get a little bit closer to the start line that you see and the apexes that you see in the curve and all that yeah so that is that is like such an important question for anyone trying to uh change a swing is that we get so stuck into the actual motion of the golf swing and the way that it should look that we forget about like is this the way that I want to see a shot is that the right window is that the right spin is that the right ball shape because the technique may look great if it doesn't match up to what you're seeing and how you're seeing then you will never have trust into it you know Sport Science and all that stuff has been great track man's been great but sometimes these things take you out of the feel of the game and sometimes it's nice to be able to go back to the old school stuff and just say hey what is the ballf flight doing one last question for you Jason um 2014 you had a wonderful Us open at Pinehurst it's right around the corner now for you as you start looking at a major championship that you've had success at uh like Pinehurst where where are you in in your mind relative to all these other things we've talked about going back to a place that you have had some some success the US open's going to be auta type grass there's Turtle Back greens there's going to be a lot of you know three woods and and and and and potentially five on eight on you know putting around the greens going up into those types of greens um you're going to have to have really good touch from long distances whether you're on the the green or just off the green you're going to have really need to work a lot on on on touch um it was a golf course that I think finished tied fourth at uh Martin ker ended up winning that that event it's going to be tough as US Open always is so short game is it is is a must especially around that place and a and a part of the game that you excel in with the wedges and also too with the putter the optimism sounds really high Jason it's great to hear we appreciate the time my friend all the best to you and your family and we look forward to seeing you down there at pioner good to see you Mar thanks having me on night as well [Music]