Day deserves a firm invite
The second time could be the charm.
Filipino-Australian Jason Day, the world’s top golf player until this past weekend, should be invited, vigorously this time to visit the land of his mother’s birth.
Day’s mom, Dening Grapilon, who helped mold him as a professional golfer of global caliber, left Carigara town in Leyte for the land Down Under in 1982
Day was informally asked to come home in 2013, two years after he finished runner up in the US Open and Masters—among his near misses of golf’s majors before his breakthrough win in the US PGA championship this year.
While painting the National Golf Association of the Philippines as a house of fresh ideas and bold moves, then president Tommy Manotoc initiated talks that eventually fizzled out to give Day a homecoming and the incentive to play in the Philippine Open.
Day in his first event as the No. 1 in the world, finally looked human, finishing in a logjam for 10th place in the Tour Championship at the Eastlake Golf Club in Atlanta Sunday (Monday in Manila).
Despite his less than stellar showing in the PGA tour finale, another try should be made by sports and government leaders to persuade the Fil-Australian golfer to hang out for a few days in the Philippines, trace his roots and underline the fact that we can excel in the world stage of a game that does not require height and heft.
Acknowledging that he was not a machine that “can hit it straight down the gut every single time,” Day has relinquished golf’s top dog title back to Jordan Spieth whose game clicked to stamped his class on the field at Eastlake.
The 27-year-old Spieth pockets $1.5 for winning the Tour Championship and collects the $10 million FedEx Cup bonus that Day would have banked had he finished no more than fifth.
With his victory , the young Texan should also win the Player of the Year Award from voting PGA touring pros.
He has a total of five tour wins, including two majors this year. Day also have five wins, including one major, making both twentysomethings the only players in the last 20 years to post that many wins in a single season.
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The following—a humorous spin on Vice President Jejomar Binay’s difficulty in finding a running mate for the race of his life—was posted on Facebook by veteran editor Zip Roxas, a.k.a Carlos Quinto:
Poor Jojo Binay. The man, although the first to declare his candidacy for the presidency, still doesn’t have a viable running mate. Word has it that he toyed with the idea of naming MILF honcho (Mohagher) Iqbal, but his handlers realized that the catchphrase “Bi-Ik” (sic) (piglet) wouldn’t fly.
They are now training their sights on Sen. Gregorio “Gringo” Honasan, “Bi-Hon” may get the nods of the noodle houses in Chinatown, but still…baka maiwan silang natutulog sa pansitan (they might end up asleep at the wheel).
