UNIVERSITY PLACE, Wash. — One day after he collapsed from a bout of vertigo, Jason Day was standing taller than ever Saturday in the U.S. Open.
UNIVERSITY PLACE, Wash. — One day after he collapsed from a bout of vertigo, Jason Day was standing taller than ever Saturday in the U.S. Open.
When the medication began to wear off and the vertigo returned, Day fought his way to the finish with a 31 on the back nine for a 2-under 68. He wound up in a four-way tie for the lead with Masters champion Jordan Spieth, Dustin Johnson and Branden Grace of South Africa.
Day felt nauseous over the final hour. He had to steady himself to stick a tee in the ground and pluck a ball out of the cup. And he considered quitting three times.
Good thing he didn’t.
The 27-year-old Australian is playing in the final group of a major for the first time.
“That was the greatest round I’ve ever watched,” said Colin Swatton, his caddie and longtime coach who whispered words of encouragement along the hilly terrain of Chambers Bay. “I said, ‘You’ve got the heart of a lion. You get to show the world today you get to be the greatest you can be and look, let’s do it.’ And he just put his head down and kept walking, one foot in front of the other. It was pretty impressive.”
Day steadied himself with a performance that brought to mind Ken Venturi winning the U.S. Open at Congressional in 1964 with a 36-hole final while suffering from heat exhaustion and severe dehydration, and Tiger Woods winning the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines in 2008 with a shattered left leg.
Day still has one day to go and a course that is getting faster and scarier by the day. And he has plenty of company.
Spieth, trying to become only the fourth player since 1960 to win the first two legs of the Grand Slam, squandered three birdie chances late in his round and had to settle for a 71. Johnson twice smashed driver that set him up for birdies down the stretch, and he couldn’t convert in his round of 70.
Grace overcame a rough patch in the middle of his round — three bogeys in five holes — and shot a 70.
Day wasn’t sure he would even play in the third round. He collapsed to the ground Friday in a frightening moment. He managed to get up with help, stagger into a bunker to play his next shot and made bogey to finish three shots out of the lead.
And then he delivered one of his best rounds considering the situation.
“I didn’t feel that great coming out early,” said Day, who dropped two shots in his opening four holes to fall as many as seven shots behind at one point. “I felt pretty groggy on the front nine just from the drugs that I had in my system, then kind of flushed that out on the back nine. The vertigo came back a little bit on the 13th tee box, and then felt nauseous all day. I started shaking on 16 tee box and then just tried to get it in, really. Just wanted to get it in.”
He said it was worse than the vertigo he suffered last year at Firestone that caused him to withdraw. This time, he kept playing.
“I think the goal was just to go through today and see how it goes,” he said.