Jason Day opened the 90th Masters with a 3-under 69 on Thursday, and the 38-year-old was back in the mix at Augusta National after rallying from an early bogey on No. 3.
For Day, that kind of start still carries the memory of 2011, when he made his Masters debut and finished in the thick of an eight-way race for the green jacket. He birdied the last two holes that day and stood in the clubhouse as a co-leader with Adam Scott before Charl Schwartzel answered with birdies on the final four holes to win by two. Day called it unreal, saying it was probably the most excited he had ever been in a golf tournament and the most exciting tournament he had ever played in.
The weight of that first Augusta run has never really left him. Before that 2011 debut, Day said he did not know that no Australian had ever won the green jacket or that no Masters rookie since Fuzzy Zoeller in 1979 had won at Augusta. When he heard it, he said, “Really?” and then, “I didn’t know that. Maybe I can change that,” a line that sounded ambitious at the time and still hangs over his best weeks there now.
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He has spent the 15 years since then trying to turn Augusta into a place of unfinished business. Day had a solo third in 2013 when Scott won, a T5 in 2019 when Tiger Woods captured his fifth green jacket, and he added four more top-10 finishes at the Masters after that near-miss in 2011. Even last year, he finished tied eighth despite a bogey-bogey closing stretch. He has also missed his only cuts at the Masters in 2020-21 and did not qualify in 2022, reminders that the course has not always rewarded the same player who has so often threatened to win there.
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That arc matters because it tracks a harder chapter in his career. During his injury-induced slump in 2021-22, Day battled chronic back pain and fell outside the top 100 in the world. He has said the injuries gave him more purpose in his life, and that idea has become part of how he describes the work now: staying healthy, competing with the best players in the world and still believing he can hold a trophy again. On Thursday, the old Augusta promise was there again, and so was the question that has followed him since he was 23 years old: whether this is the week Jason Day finally turns major championship memory into something more lasting.
