The Resilient Journey of Jason Day: From Farm to Golf Pro

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00:00Profiling your come up a little bit and how you ended up getting to a boarding school.

00:08Can you just talk a little bit about that? Because I think it kind of sets the stage

00:11of why Jason Day is one of the most resilient, hardworking professional golfers that we've

00:17seen in the last couple of decades.

00:19Yeah. So I'll, like my story is like kind of large, but I'll try and condense as much

00:25as I can.

00:26Yeah, no, please.

00:27I grew up in rural Australia, like it was kind of grew up on a farm when I was a kid.

00:34And then my dad found a golf club at a rubbish tip. So we used to go to the rubbish tip or

00:39landfill is what we call it over here and try and find things that we could use around

00:44the house.

00:45Because we weren't well off. We weren't like crazy poor, but we weren't well off. So we'd

00:50go and try and find stuff that we could use around the house. My dad found a golf club

00:55and then he brought it back. And then that's kind of how I started my journey in golf.

01:03And we moved away from where I was in Beaudesert, Queensland, to a place called Rockhampton,

01:09which is eight hours north of where I'm at in Beaudesert, which was quite significant

01:14change. And then my mom and dad were meat workers. And the story kind of gets like it's

01:20like this. So when I started playing junior golf, my dad was very, very abusive on the

01:25golf course. So he if I didn't perform, I like I he beat me. So I remember one thing

01:33when I didn't perform play well at a junior event at my home club, he in the in the in

01:41the car after the round, he like he completely beat me. I was bruised all over all over my

01:46body. And then but what I understood it was that if there was ever a positive out of it

01:56like that, was that it forced me to concentrate at a very young age forced me to focus at

02:02a very young age. And I because I absolutely love golf. Golf was just something that I

02:08just thoroughly enjoyed so much, even if I wasn't if I if I weren't playing with, you

02:12know, with my friends, you know, at eight years old. But my dad was very scary. If I

02:18didn't perform, I knew that I needed to perform. So I needed to go out there and focus. So

02:21I wasn't always like joking around with my my friends. And then my dad passed away when

02:26I was when I was 12 of cancer. And, you know, long story short, you look back in your life

02:35and you go, man, one of those like, why did you know some of these things happen, but

02:38then you don't realize some of these things happen for a reason. And there was a lot of

02:42good that came out of it. So not saying that my father passing was a good thing. It was

02:47just it opened up another door, another avenue for me to be able to go to boarding school.

02:51And I started falling off the rails a little bit. You know, I started drinking at 12, 12

02:57and a half, you know, after my dad passed away, getting in fights at school and just

03:01going down the wrong kind of path. And my sister ran away from from home for four years.

03:06She was 14 years old. So she ran. She was homeless on the streets. You know, had some

03:12other personal issues inside my family that like was was pretty, pretty dark stuff, you

03:17know, that I want to talk about. But, yeah, I mean, that's kind of when my mom took a

03:26chance on me. You know, she she borrowed some money. She sent me away to a boarding school

03:32down back, actually really close to where I was born, Bodeza. It was actually only 20

03:37minutes away, which is funny enough. And this boarding school, that's when I met Colin

03:44Swatton, who used to be my coach slash caddy for a long, long time. And that was the positive

03:53that came out of it was that I got to meet Colin. And he I think he knew early that I

03:59needed structure in my life. You know, there was nothing else to do other than like because

04:06we were in the middle of nowhere in this golf academy. It was like it was literally golf

04:11and nothing else. So he knew that like I needed structure. So he gave me a structure in my

04:17life. And that's kind of I started to play a lot better since then. That's kind of in a

04:23really condensed story. That's how things progressed to the golf academy.

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