Queensland Amateur win signals arrival of Jason Day

BY Bruce Young | Queensland Mens Tour | 2004 Queensland Amateur Championship | Wrap | 08 May 2004

16-year-old Jason Day’s win in the Queensland State Amateur Championship has signalled his arrival to a level where he is destined to make a significant mark in the years ahead. At sixteen years and six months he becomes the youngest player to win a Queensland Amateur in living memory but the manner in which he withstood a spirited challenge from Justin Maker, belies his youth.

Just a month after winning the Australian Junior Championship in Canberra, Day won his first senior title with an impressive win over the Virginia Golf Club’s Maker, four years his senior.

It threatened to be very much a one horse race through the first 26 holes of the match when, after a birdie at the 8th hole of the afternoon, Day had gone eight up with ten holes to play. That sparked a remarkable comeback from Maker who birdied five of the next six holes to reduce the margin to three with four holes to play. The 33rd hole of the day became pivotal. At Oxley Golf Club’s par four 15th hole, Maker drove left and was followed by Day who blocked his tee shot right. Day could only pitch out still leaving himself 100 metres or so with his third. Maker hit a low running shot from the left hand rough avoiding the trees just ahead of him and finished some eight metres beyond the hole. Day pitched to four metres and watched as Maker rushed his first putt some two and a half metres metres by the hole. Day missed his par attempt but when Maker missed his also, the hole was halved and the momentum that Maker had been building was gone. That was Maker’s chance and although he would win the next hole, Day went on to win the match at the 35th hole, 3 & 1.

For Day, who arrived from Rockhampton to attend the now defunct golf programme at the Kooralbyn International College some four years ago, this win highlighted not only his significant golfing talent but a remarkable composure for one so young. He had the assistance of his golf coach at the Hills College in Jimboomba, Colin Swatton on the bag for the final and they worked well together. Day would later highlight the benefit of a booklet that Swatton has produced called “Seven Steps To Success” which focuses mainly on the course management side of the game and paid tribute to that book for much of the success he has had of late.

Day’s scholarship at the Hills College in Jimoboomba, the college he joined after the demise of the Kooralbyn International School, ends at the completion of 2004 and he has his sights set on a scholarship to an American University perhaps a year on from that.

Jason Day Interview