Jason Day: Fashion, fitness, and finding my confidence again

He changed his game. He changed his clothes. Now, Jason Day is changing golf itself. Michael Catling sat down with the World No.1 to find out how.

Jason Day is leaning back in his chair, cradling a golf club wrapped in a towel and admiring the fruits of his endeavours. “This is my barn,” he says proudly, referring to a sprawling estate in Ohio that serves as his own private golfing sanctuary. Behind him, there’s a kitchen and a gym, as well as the Full Swing simulator and a shape-shifting green. Outside, it gets more impressive still.

Three practice greens sit alongside a 160-yard par-3 and five bunkers that simulate different types of sand. The one nearest to him is modeled on Augusta National, while the one at the back is inspired by the revetted-style bunkers of an Open Championship course.

It’s a magnificent space with reminders of his greatest achievements stacked up on a five-tier trophy stand for good measure. The shelves were practically bare when he moved into the property 15 years ago, but he’s done a good job of populating them in the years since.

The Wanamaker Trophy sits front and centre alongside 12 other trophies he has collected on the PGA Tour. There are others, of course, but the Aussie hasn’t got time to go through them all. This is the third in a series of interviews he needs to get through today – and his agent has warned us that he’s already running late. The fact he is so in demand, despite being winless in nearly two years, speaks to his reinvention as a disruptor and designer in golf’s sartorial scramble.

When we last spoke, Day was contracted to Nike and presented as a mini-me Tiger Woods in body-hugging pants and polos. He wore the look well. Only we now know it wasn’t really him. For starters, he never felt entirely comfortable. He also didn’t like wearing the same outfit as every other Nike athlete.

He spent years searching for a new identity but never found the right fit until Malbon came calling in late 2023. They wanted a new face for the brand’s golf apparel and crucially, they were prepared to give him the creative freedom to find and develop his own style.

“When I first started talking to Malbon, I was big into doing custom clothes that were very old school, very classy, very elegant looking stuff,” explains Day. “But then when I started talking to Stephen at Malbon and the team, they were like, ‘We can get you anything you want, the way you want it to be designed.’ So as soon as they told me that, I was like, ‘Great, I want linens. I want cashmere. I want nice cottons. I want different types of bagginess.’ That design stuff, it’s very important to me because that’s how you stand out. And I think we’ve come up with some pretty unique stuff.”

That much is an understatement. At the Masters last year, Day arrived for his second round, playing alongside Tiger, repping an eye-catching, Malbon-logoed sweater vest. Augusta’s officials wasted little time in politely requesting that he remove it. He agreed, of course, but the story got out – along with a picture of Day wearing it.

“It had like three billion impressions in two days on the internet,” said co-founder Stephen Malbon. “Tiger made the cut. You had Bryson [DeChambeau] and the Jesus photo when he picked up the sign and put it on his shoulder. Some other player told one of the patrons to f**k off. But the only thing they were talking about was Jason and his sweater.”

‘Vestgate’, as it has come to be known in Malbon’s offices, helped put the streetwear brand on the map. It also made Day an easy target among golf’s fashion police. One fan even suggested he should be fined for wearing a grey tracksuit at Pebble Beach this year.

Day prefers to see the funny side in addressing some of his ‘wackier’, more polarising outfits. He’s not interested in being a people pleaser, though it says a lot that a “handful of guys” have reached out to him about joining the Malbon movement. He deserves a chunk of credit for daring to be different.

“We’re trying to keep people guessing [with it],” he smiles. “The biggest thing for us is when people go, ‘What is Jason Day going to wear?’ When you walk down the driving range, everyone kind of blends in. So it doesn’t take much to stand out, especially in this day and age. I don’t look at myself as a trendsetter, but we’re trying to build this brand in Malbon and hopefully bring more eyes to the game and help to grow it that way as well.”

Day’s own journey into golf was less about making statements and more about trying to escape his past. It’s no secret that his dad, Alvin, was an abusive alcoholic, but when he wasn’t working at the local abattoir he would often dig through a nearby rubbish tip, looking for anything he could repurpose or pawn. When he found an old, partially rotting 3-wood and brought it home, a three-year-old Day was immediately smitten. It formed the building blocks of his love for the game.

Aged six, he joined his local club in Beaudesert. Then, when the family moved eight hours away to Rockhampton, he became a member at a 15-hole public course called Capricorn Country Club, where $100 got you unlimited golf for the year. To Day, it was his own slice of nirvana.

When he wasn’t playing, he would dive into the creek or lake to dig up balls to play with. If he found a coveted balata ball, he’d save it for tournament play. Back at school, he wasn’t very popular with the ‘in crowd’, teased for being ‘straight off the boat’ thanks to his Filipino heritage. At home, he wouldn’t dare step out of line because Alvin would have the belt out and would whale away for any minor indiscretion. 

“Golf was definitely an escape,” Day told TG back in 2015. “Every afternoon after school I ran away from the house, back to the golf course, and didn’t come back home until it was dark. When you’re young, you don’t really think of it as running away from things. It was more running to something I liked and something that helped me focus away from the sad or angry or not so good parts of life. Golf still is an escape for me now. When I’m on the course I’m at peace more than with any other part of my life.”

As tough as it already was for Day, it became much harder. When he was 12, Alvin was diagnosed with stomach cancer and passed away soon after. His father was gone and so was the fear of discipline. His young world spiralled out of control – drinking alcohol to excess and getting in school and street fights, sometimes using broken bottles for weapons. On one occasion he woke up in a gutter after blacking out.

Things got so bad that his mum, Dening, was forced to step in. She borrowed money from his uncle and sold their house to get him into a boarding school with a golf academy. A 12-year-old Day still had attitude though.

During his first group golf lesson there, he got into a heated argument with the school’s instructor, Colin Swatton, and stormed off the course. It was not the best first impression, but that thinking time led to a realisation that he had to grow up. He apologised and quickly developed a bond with Swatton that led to him becoming the hardest worker at school.

Spurred on by a book about Tiger Woods that mapped out all his achievements, Day used his scores as benchmarks and started hauling his clubs over a mile to the range before and after school. During term time he reckons he was practising 32 hours a week. It led to an ambitious declaration that he wanted to be World No.1 by the time he was 22. 

A promising amateur career, including a World Junior title, set him on his way, but it was clear to Day and Swatton that he was never going to be one for the US college system. They had higher hopes of him going straight to the big time. He turned pro at the age of 18 and Swatton told Dening that he believed Day could make it. She agreed that they should try America – but on one condition. Swatton had to go with him.

For the next 14 years the pair travelled the world together, ticking off goals and wins with increasing regularity. First on the PGA Tour, then at the PGA Championship in 2015. Sandwiched between that major breakthrough were nine other titles, including four in eight weeks in 2015, and another three in eight weeks during spring 2016. Swatton had become a second father of sorts, the glue holding Day together. They were even best man at each other’s weddings. 

“To be able to make that walk up 18 at Whistling Straits, knowing I’d finally won a major, that was obviously pretty special,” remembers Day. “But to be able to share that with Col and cry in his arms, and [hug] my wife and family, it was this great sense of not only relief, but an overwhelming feeling because of everything I’d gone through – the injuries, stuff from my childhood. It all just came flooding out.”

After winning two of the first three events in the FedEx Cup Playoffs in 2015, Day became World No.1 for the first time. That it happened five years later than he’d originally planned was easier to accept with the Wanamaker sitting on his shelf at home.

Adam Scott likened Day’s dominance to Tiger’s, but that comparison extended beyond his grip on the game as a chronic back issue was becoming harder for Day to ignore. Then came the news that his mum had been diagnosed with lung cancer. She kept fighting for five years, but Day struggled to mount an offensive of his own during that time.

He was going through the motions, hardly practising before tournaments to save what little pain-free golf he could muster for when it mattered most. Eventually, the stress on his mind and body began to take its toll. After Dustin Johnson ended his 47-week reign atop the World Ranking in early 2017, Day got rid of Swatton as his caddie and then dispensed with his coaching services in June 2020 while trying to rebuild his swing and protect his back.

“I wish I would have taken care of myself a little more,” he says now. “Looking back, if I was giving advice to someone else, I would tell them, ‘Don’t go overboard with the fitness stuff.’ There was a good time there, in ’15 and ’16, where I was in the perfect spot with my body. And then I went too far with it, lost too much weight, and then lost 30 yards from my driver. And then I went the other way, because I went from 175 pounds to 210 pounds, so there was a dramatic difference in the way my training schedule was and what I ate. I wish I hadn’t fiddled around with that so much, because with that came injuries.”

Teaming up with Chris Como at the end of 2020 did succeed in getting Day playing and swinging pain free again, but it wasn’t a quick process. Everything came to a head after the 2022 American Express when Day took a wrong turn on his way home and got lost.

“I just sat on the side of the road, looking at the mountains for like 30 minutes,” he revealed afterwards. “Because it felt like no matter what I did, I was just turning the wrong way every single time. I was struggling with my body. Struggling mentally. Struggling with my mum passing. Struggling with a lot of things.”

He never told his wife, Ellie, but he seriously considered packing it all in. For whatever reason though, he kept plugging away. He found his way back to the winner’s circle at the Byron Nelson in 2023, this time with a new swing and perspective on golf. Another victory followed with playing partner Lydia Ko at the inaugural Grant Thornton Invitational, before a lean 2024 season convinced him to swallow his pride and reunite with Swatton at the start of this year.

“He knows my game better than anyone, obviously, because we’ve had the history there,” he said after their first week working together at the Arnold Palmer Invitational in March. “He’s taught me since I was 13 years old. We had a bit of a break and now we’re back together, which is nice. I’m looking forward to seeing the progression of my game going forward.”

The early returns so far have been somewhat promising. The 37-year-old finished inside the top 10 at Bay Hill and the Masters, and then came close to forcing a playoff at the Travelers Championship before Keegan Bradley’s late heroics. Day’s eyes narrow at the prospect of contending for victories more often, which leads me to question how far away he is from the Jason Day of 10 years ago. The wavering in his response suggests he and Swatton are still figuring that part out.

“I would say, in 2015, I was probably at my peak fitness,” he concedes. “My ball speed was probably at my highest, like mid 180s, even dipping into just below 190[mph] every now and then. I was one of the longer guys out here, and I putted the best. I would look at it now and say I probably don’t hit it as far. My iron play needs to improve. My short game is probably still there, but my putting is a lot streakier now. Sometimes it gets off and that’s because I physically can’t stand there and putt for two hours anymore.

“A lot of limitations that I have are due to my body, so I’ve got to rework it and challenge myself to come at it from a different direction, because the stuff that I used to do that got me to No.1 in the world, I physically can’t do anymore. That’s the reality. I’ve got to somehow come up with different ideas and evolve my game in different ways, so that I can be as successful as I possibly can.”

Underneath the disarming smile and bold clothes, you can tell Day is serious about proving something to himself and to those who have concluded that he is already past his best. He certainly doesn’t want to be known as the guy who has a grand slam of runner-up finishes in major championships. I point out that he’s only 18 months older than Rory McIlroy, which feels significant when discussing his ambitions and the challenges ahead of him.

He makes little secret of the fact he has a wife and five kids to worry about, as well as a fledgling YouTube channel and a stake in Malbon. It’s a lot to take on and his schedule is only going to increase if he wants to script a different ending to his story. So does he really, truly think he is capable of getting back somewhere close to his peak?

“My goal is still to get back to No.1 in the world,” he says defiantly. “I know that there are a lot of steps. I’m like, what, 35th or something like that in the world right now? I’m kind of quiet right now, unfortunately, and I would rather be at the top end, closer to where Rory [McIlroy] and Scottie [Scheffler] are. So I want to strive towards getting back to No.1 and winning major championships.

“I want to get off of one [major victory]. I want to win the Masters. Those are the things that are driving me towards competing and playing well and climbing that mountain again. But I’ve also got to make sure I focus.

“Sometimes you can get a little bit distracted in trying to help design or build a brand in Malbon, and then building a YouTube channel on top of that as well. That stuff takes time, so I’ve got to get the balance right. But I honestly think I still have the game.

“I still feel young and healthy. And I look at Vijay [Singh], [Henrik] Stenson, Phil [Mickelson], they all won a good chunk of their titles in their 40s, so there’s still a lot of golf left in me, which fills me with confidence.”