Jason Day Believes His Back is Ready for 2017 Season

After struggling with injury in 2016, Jason Day is feeling confident heading into 2017.

A person might need a course in anatomy to understand Jason Day’s back issues, the ones that have sidelined him several times in his career, including last year. He spent the last three months rehabilitating his back to get ready for the 2017 season.

“There are a few factors that obviously go into my injury, per se if I’m not disciplined or diligent enough to stay on top of my core and corrective exercises, then sooner or later it will catch up to me,” he explained to media prior to the SBS Tournament of Champions.

The back injury cropped up several times in 2016. After winning his first major, the 2015 PGA Championship, he followed it up with victories at the Barclays and the BMW. Then last spring, he won three tournaments, the Arnold Palmer Invitational, the Dell Match Play and The Players. His back problems flared up at the Dell Match Play and then plagued him all last year, including Sunday at the 2016 BMW, toward the end of the FedEx Cup Playoffs.

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“I just had a week to try and recover, and I just couldn’t recover anymore,” he admitted. “No amount of cortisone that I could have put in my body would have helped it.”

Day’s tender spots are in the area of the L4 and L5 discs of the spine, which are located just above the junction of the spine and pelvis.

“It’s not so much the actual L4-L5 disc or the annular ligament tear in the disc that bothers me,” he explained. “It’s the facet joint that lock up, goes into spasm and it takes me at least a week, week and a half, two weeks just to get back on top of it and feel like I’m ready to play.”

The annular ligaments are on the outside of the discs. Wear from overuse can actually tear them and cause pain.

The facet joints are where the discs attach to each other, and they allow the back to bend, flex and rotate. Naturally for a golfer, bending, flexing and rotating are movements necessary in the swing. Because of the repetitive motion of the swing, golfers are particularly susceptible to back injuries and overuse injuries.

Day spent most of the last three months rehabilitating his back.

“I had three months off. I picked up a club twice in those three months, and I worked hard on my rehab, especially the back,” he explained. “Obviously that’s kind of been plaguing me through my career with regards to having too many withdrawals.”

Still, it didn’t stop him from getting to No. 1, a spot he’s held for 44 weeks and counting. One thing he is working on is to shorten his swing a little bit which may take some stress off his back.

“The swing got a lot longer last year,” he said. “There’s a lot more turn in my upper body than I really have had in the past. There’s a lot more speed there. So if you have a lot more turn, a lot more speed, and then unwinding, it’s a lot more balance through the ball, and that can obviously wreak havoc on your back, as well.”

He did question whether a shorter swing will harm him as far as distance off the tee.

“I think I’ve got enough distance right now to be able to get away with it, but you know, I’ve just got to keep staying on top of it,” he added. “It’s very, very difficult for me to shorten it right now, because just every time I turn, it just — the hands, they want to keep it going and going and going.”

Day said while the back is an issue, he understands what is going on and what he has to do to stay on top of it. He has an MRI at the end of every year. He gets DEXA scans which show bone density year-to-year.

“With the L4-L5 disc, there’s actually more space there. The bulged disc is gone. And usually when you have degeneration of a disc, it usually slowly gets worse and worse and worse. For some reason, mine’s got better,” he added. “It’s actually good that the facet joints kind of lock up. There’s a way that you actually go in, and if you do have discomfort in them with some pain and you’re actually getting better, you actually can go in and burn the nerves off and take the pain away. But obviously that masks it and you can’t tell if you’re getting better or worse during the year, unless you want to go back and get an MRI.”

All that said, Day is cautiously optimistic.

Next: PGA Tour Power Rankings: SBS Tournament of Champions

“I’ve been doing everything I can, and I feel pretty good. I feel fit and I’m looking forward to a good, solid year,” he said. “I’d like to win every event, but I just can’t. Unless I’m just playing in a one-guy event.”

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