Commentary: Long live the everyday Jason Days

 “Golf saved his life.”

Those were the words from the Filipina mom of Jason Day the day he became the PGA champ.

They virtually encapsulate the amazing journey of the 27-year-old Fil-Aussie, his rags-to-riches tale, from nearly going out of bounds from life to being the latest toast of golf world.

And how his mom Dening moved the family out of their town in Australia to give the son, shattered by the death of his father when he was 12, the breaks he needed and finding the man who would steer the boy from literally being trapped from the depth of despair to the Jason Day of today.

Golf saved his life. 

Weren’t old hardened souls of the game? In a lesser scale, in their own struggle in some half-forgotten fairway they live through the tales of many a Jason Day.

They welcome it. They found some way out of some mundane existence – even for a couple of hours. They live and die and live again for it with the god of golf saving them for another day.

It’s a reversal of faith and fate.

The harder, the tougher, the more punishing it is the better chance to discover the purity, the very essence of it. Like some pagan rites, there’s some sort of immersion, cleansing and purge.

No other physical endeavor could give you a sense of finality.

It humbles everyone, from Tiger Woods – you could still hear the thud of his fall – to the shuffling old men teeing off at the crack of dawn. Never mind if the verdant fairways were as green as the patch of grass in their graveyard.

It humbles you in the most excruciating way. It doesn’t separate you from your senses with one lethal left hook. It feasts on you fiber after fiber, methodically feeds on your frustration until you are left with demented suicidal thoughts and a barren soul.

And you ask for more. You come back the following day with keen resolve to play better, the remnants of the previous game still nibbling in your brain.

You realize how cruel, unkind this game is. But it brings you to a certain plane lesser mortals have been denied access to. Somewhere in the journey you become aware of your mortality. The imperfection of it all – of your entire being. 

But you feel life ebbing and flowing back again in the gusts of winds, rustle of leaves and the chirps and twits in the trees.

That’s when you head back to the first tee, ready to play again and in a hacker’s way, like Jason Day.