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Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth, Jason Day: A Big Loss Helped Them Win

By Kathlene Bissell

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It’s not always the victories that turn a contender into a champion. Sometimes, it’s the defeats. Just ask Jason Day, Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth. They all fired and fell back before finding a way to win major championships.

The most recent, Jason Day, freely admits his defeats played a part in his recent PGA Championship victory. At the Tour Championship he met with the media and tried to put the transition from contender to major winner into words.

"“To be able to get onto a golf course and even still feel pressure and all that stuff, but knowing that it’s okay. It’s good pressure to have,” Day said. “Looking back on it now, I mean all these things that have happened. Vertigo, missing playoffs in major championships, finishing second so many times and not finishing the job.”"

In fact, Sky Sports had been counting his failures and said in a story after his victory at the PGA that he had finished in the top ten nine times in the 21 majors he had played.

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“It has all given me the learning experience to do what I’ve done over the last – ever since, obviously, the Canadian Open, really,” he added.

Day has had four victories in the last six weeks, including his first major. Now he’s trying to win the FedEx Cup and Tour Championship.

Rory McIlroy also had some hard lessons while trying to win majors. No one who watches golf will forget his meltdown on the back nine at the Masters in 2011 when he hooked his tee shot so far off the 10th tee that it was nearly unplayable. That hole began a Masters demise. But like Jason Day, he took it as a learning experience.

He met with the media at the Wells Fargo a few weeks after the Masters.

"“I don’t think I was ready. That was the most important thing,” McIlroy explained. “I displayed a few weaknesses in my game that I need to work on. But I think you’ve got to take the positives. For 63 holes I led the golf tournament, and it was just a bad back nine, which — a very bad back nine that sort of took the tournament away from me, I suppose. But what can you do?”"

What he did was win the U.S. Open a month later, setting a number of scoring records at the time.

“I was very honest with myself and I knew what I needed to do differently,” he admitted. “I had a clear picture in my mind of what I needed to do and where my focus needed to be when I got myself in that position again. And luckily enough for me, I was able to get in that position, you know, the major right after Augusta.”

Jordan Spieth also had a failure before the successes of this year. Finishing second at the 2014 Masters was the biggest one.

At the RBC Heritage, the week after that Masters, he met with the media.

"“It definitely left me hungry and ready to play golf again,” Spieth said about his second place finish. “I think, the only way to kind of redeem myself and to get rid of that will eventually have to be at Augusta. So very excited, but at the same time a little bit bittersweet to come that close, and I truly believe that I’ll be back.”"

Today in his press conference Spieth at the Tour Championship Spieth mentioned that he’d finished second at the event last year and that he likes the greens, which are similar to what he grew up playing.

“I know that my game is capable of playing solid golf on this course,” he insisted. “Last year was a bit of a let down on, I think, the weekend, but this year coming back I feel like if I can get myself into the position that we want to be in entering the final round, then I’ll be a different player than I was the last couple years, just based on everything that’s happened.”

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    • Spieth said getting beaten can actually be motivational, including his recent rounds with Jason Day.

    “It’s frustrating. When I say it’s frustrating, I’m frustrated in my own game and the fact that I didn’t have the patience needed in order to then make more birdies and get further under par,” he explained.

    He noted that five of his last seven rounds have been played with Day.

    “He destroyed my score in those rounds, for lack of a better term. It is very motivating, because my personality, I don’t like getting beat in anything,” Spieth insisted. “It doesn’t make me angry. It makes me want to get back to the level I was playing at this whole year, to get on top of my game and see if the top of my game can beat the top of anybody else’s game when they’re at their best.”

    In terms of falling short in big tournaments, the golfer who has had the most successes at the biggest events in the last half century also had the most failures. That is Jack Nicklaus. He won 18 professional majors, and he finished second 19 times. His first chance to win a major came at the 1960 U.S. Open. Nicklaus was leading for a time during the final round, but he ended up second to a charging Arnold Palmer.

    Next: Jason Day: Not Impossible to Stop

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