There’s lingering joy from Jason Day’s moment in the sun.
Retired scribes Mike Genovea Sr. and Cris Maralit are still savoring the Filipino-Australian golfer’s triumph in the PGA Championship last Sunday.
Both gentlemen drove traffic to their Facebook accounts with constant updates on Day’s game until his eventual victory at Whistling Straights in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. It was Day’s first in the majors after a string of six near misses in golf’s most important events since 2013.
“I was always certain he (Day) would win one of the majors sooner or later,” said Genovea, who was editor of the old Manila Chronicle and a past president of the Philippine Sportswriters Association. “And he did it in grand style—20 under par, eclipsing Tiger Wood’s 19 under when he won the 2000 British Open.”
Genovea reported Day’s triumph with religious enthusiasm, but at one point he had to excuse himself to attend late Mass before resuming his posts.
A sportswriter who became a police general and the best national police spokesperson in my book, Maralit felt that Day was on the cusp of triumph in the closing holes of the PGA Championship. That was when he outshot his closest pursuer—Jordan Spieth, the 2015 Masters and US Open winner and currently ranked the world’s No. 1 parbuster.
“Judging from the golfing skills he displayed in the past majors, it was just a matter of time before Jason won one himself,” Maralit said.
Even my skeptical golf teacher was less critical this time. “Di na ipinanganak na segunda bata mo (Your boy’s not born second any longer),” he said of Day, who ended up runner-up in the US Masters and US Open in 2011.
Although there was a slight ping in his message, my instructor was pleased nonetheless. After all, he’d been among the impatient ones who could not wait for Day to go over the hump.
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Day’s emotional breakthrough win in the PGA championship was a cause for celebration in Australia and, in a limited way, in the Philippines.
His mom, Dening Grapilon, a major player in his development as a golfer of world caliber, left Carigara town in Leyte in 1982 for the land Down Under.
“Truly, the Philippines is proud of Jason Day, a champion,” a Malacañang spokesperson said in a statement. It was a phony reaction from the Palace that chose to ignore sports in the President’s state of the nation address.
Golf can’t hold a candle to basketball as a sport in this country, thus Day’s victory probably did not click in the minds of young athletes in the countryside.
That’s because golf remains a rich man’s sport, with a limited grassroots program that sometimes becomes a contentious issue for the country’s dysfunctional golf personalities.
Most youngsters have never set foot on greens and fairways that to them a golf course is so alien it might as well be Mars.