CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Jason Day wants to repeat what he did a year ago, which is win the Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow.
What he doesn’t want is a repeat of what has occurred too often in his career, which is finding himself hampered by an injury.
Too often — as recently as the Masters, when he was experiencing recurring back problems — Day has had trouble getting through tournaments without some sort of physical incident.
“[When] you have an injury, you feel like your world’s ending because this is all you know and this is all you do,’’ Day said. “You’re a professional golfer and this is kind of how you live your life, especially for me, because I wake up thinking about golf and go to bed thinking about golf. I’m eating thinking about golf. So this is my life. Outside of my family, golf is it.
“Sometimes it’s difficult when you have an injury to ever think, ‘Is that the final thing that’s going to push me over the line to actually have to hang up the clubs?’ You always have to have a good team in place with regards to a good doctor and good trainer, good physio. Having a good wife, having a good support system around you, knowing that it’s not about right now, it’s trying to build to get back to peak performance.’’
Day recently talked about an exercise he’s been doing to help his back, which is blowing into balloons to “keep my rib cage down.’’
“My rib cage gets up and then it blocks my mid-back and then I can’t really turn, so I get it from somewhere else and that’s why my back flares up,’’ Day said. “Any sort of training will actually kind of aggravate my back even more, so I’ve just kind of stayed away from it. I’ve just been rehabbing.
“I’m in like the rehab phase where I’m just trying to get through each and every week. I feel good about how things feel this week. I mean, last week was a bit tough with the stop-and-go starts. I think I warmed up five times in two days, which is crazy.
“But overall I feel good about my body right now. I’m very optimistic about it. You know, I’m just kind of rehabbing everything, seeing my guy every morning and every night and then I’m doing any exercises. It’s probably an hour and a half worth of rehab every single day.’’
