Jason Day has summoned his old mate Col Swatton back as coach, and the pair are fired up for this month’s PGA Championship at Quail Hollow, a course where Day has won before.
It was September 2017 when a tearful Jason Day welcomed a few trusted reporters, including your correspondent, into the locker room at Conway Farms Golf Club, host of the BMW Championship that year outside Chicago. He wanted to explain why he had parted ways with the caddie, fellow Australian Col Swatton, who had been through it all on Day’s journey to world No.1. Swatton and Day had spent more than a decade together after first meeting in 1999 at the Kooralbyn International School, where 12-year-old Day was a promising golf prodigy and Swatton the resident teaching pro. Under Swatton’s tutelage, and his caddie services, Day eventually spent 47 consecutive weeks as the world’s top-ranked male golfer, a stint that began weeks after winning his first major at the 2015 PGA Championship.
Despite that emotional split in 2017 – after which Day used two close friends from his childhood in Queensland, accomplished golfers Luke Reardon and Rika Batibasaga, to co-caddie for him – Swatton continued in the team as coach for another three years. In 2020, though, Day was in the depths of professional despair and feared lower-back injuries would force an early retirement on one of the most exciting careers Australian golf has ever seen. He tried everything, including four years with the popular, new-age swing guru Chris Como. He took more than 10,000 smartphone videos of his swing and obsessed over creating a motion with more rotation that produced a body-friendly fade shape.
In the meantime, Swatton became a talented television commentator while also coaching gifted young Australian Karl Vilips, a PGA Tour rookie who won the opposite-field Puerto Rico Open in March. “I love what I do with PGA Tour Live and ESPN+,” Swatton says. “I’m doing the world feed [this year and]
next year.”
It was during that four-year span that Day concedes he became hyper-analytical and over-obsessed with the golf swing versus playing the game. Admittedly, that approached also brought a brief window of success – in 2023 Day won the Byron Nelson tournament in Texas to end a five-year drought on the PGA Tour.
Eventually, the technical thoughts began to overwhelm Day – an issue he says he brought on himself. Tempting himself with finding the secret to the golf swing didn’t mesh with a guy who grew up driving the ball well and scrambling when he was in trouble. Late last year, Day parted with Como. In January this year, he gave his old mate “Swatto” a call to bring the band back together.
Their communication started slowly, with text messages, phone calls and Day even sending a few swing videos to Swatton. But the coach kept his feedback minimal.
“Jase (and Chris Como) have done a great job the past few years,” Swatton tells Australian Golf Digest. “[Day’s] understanding of the golf swing and the mechanics of the swing and everything is on a totally different level now than what it used to be. I told him that his golf IQ, and his swing IQ, is so much different than it used to be before.”
In recalling to the team Swatton – who coached Day during 12 of his 13 PGA Tour titles between 2010 and 2018 – he wasn’t looking for major technical adjustments. Instead, the boy from Beaudesert who is now based in Columbus, Ohio, is searching for a sense of clarity and freedom. He wants to play, not think.
“I think Jase was getting to a place where he was a little bogged down in technique, thinking that, If I make my swing perfect, I will play perfect,” Swatton says. “We all know that in this game, that’s not the case.”
GOOD VIBES, BUT ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
Swatton and Day are looking to emulate their past success and decided the best place to start was a bootcamp. The team rented a house near Isleworth Country Club in early March, just before the Arnold Palmer Invitational at nearby Bay Hill, and worked long hours over the course of a week. “That’s what needed to happen,” Swatton insists.
“We had a lot of stuff that we had to sift through, from equipment to putting to swing stuff,” Swatton adds. “We did some good research, and we looked at a lot of different things that needed to be looked at. But at the end of each day, we’d go back to the house and sit around and play cards and have a lot of fun, which was cool.
“It was a really good energy, and it was good to be part of it. He wanted everybody to stay at the house and Jason, as you know, is big on energy and he’s big on having people around him in a team environment. We spent a week doing what Aussies do best, which is sledging each other and having great banter.”
For Swatton, stepping back into the fold felt natural. That feeling of years apart dissolved quickly. Day says the reunion has been just like “the good old days”. Those days when Day won seven PGA Tour titles – including a major – in 17 starts, or 10 months, between 2015 and early 2016.
“The vibe is good. Everything’s spinning in the right direction for my team, which is great. So I’m very pleased,” Day tells Australian Golf Digest.
Already, Swatton has made significant adjustments to Day’s mental approach to the game, including “quieting down the internal chatter”, and making Day focus on making things as simple as possible.
“We play a very complicated game anyways. For me, we are able to just hit the shots that are needed,” Day says. “If it doesn’t work out, don’t dwell on it or attach yourself to a negative. Just get on with it and try to shoot the best score you can that day and then just talk about it. Then try to do a better job the next day.”
In their first tournament back as player-coach, Day was in the hunt to win a second career title at Bay Hill (after his 2016 victory) but faded on the final day to a share of eighth. Still, signs of good golf were there.
Swatton has also focused on finding a more efficient way to swing the club, as well as altering Day’s putting. “We’re not going down this track of trying to make it perfect. We’re trying to keep [him] within the parameters,” Swatton says.
Day has more than struggled on the greens in 2025, which pales in comparison to several years in his prime when he led the PGA Tour across several seasons in the strokes gained: putting statistical measurement. Though he hasn’t missed a cut this year, he ranks 117th in Strokes Gained: Putting, losing just less than half a stroke per round at -0.125. He is 113th in Strokes Gained: Off The Tee, but he knew his priority was on the greens.
“We changed a few setup things in the putter, and it just felt like I could just start things better online with better speed, which was fantastic,” Day says. “So I was very, very pleased with that. I’ve just got to work on my irons now and keep that within the bumper rails.”
Swatton is also pushing Day, who’ll turn 38 in November, to prioritise his wellbeing.
“Health is obviously the most crucial thing for me, just staying injury-free, and then going out and just playing golf. What Col wanted, really, was for me to avoid trying to be so perfect with everything in my game.”
That’s music to the ears of Day fans, who grew to love his swashbuckling brand of golf. He was a powerful driver in his prime, and mostly accurate. Although, when he wasn’t, his par saves were not dissimilar to Seve Ballesteros or, in today’s game, his contemporary Jordan Spieth. Day’s most memorable escape was a par save on the second hole in the third round of the 2014 PGA Championship at Valhalla. Day hooked his tee shot way left, across a stream, but found the ball. He promptly took off his shoes, rolled up his pants, waded through the water and made a truly ridiculous par.
Now, though, the approach is a little more strategic.
“My body doesn’t react the same as when I was a 21-year-old,” Day says. “So there’s a little bit more delicacy – or I have to be a little bit more delicate with it and with my time, and being disciplined with my time and in regard to how my body is. That takes a little bit more time and effort to stay disciplined in the morning and the afternoon with stretches and exercises, and also the recovery stuff after practice and tournament rounds.”
WINNING MORE
As Swatton and Day look ahead, high on the priority list is winning an elusive second major. Lately, Day has had only flashes of contending at majors. He held the clubhouse lead during the final round of the 2020 PGA Championship (won by Collin Morikawa) and finished a career-best T-2 at the 2023 Open Championship behind Brian Harman in horrendous conditions at Royal Liverpool. Winning a major is something Swatton thinks is a matter of when, not if.
“He’s made it clear what his goals and objectives are for the next couple of years, and I think they’re attainable,” Swatton says. “When you have the goals that he has, which is to win multiple times in a season and try to get back to that No.1 spot, I think it excites and invigorates the entire team,” Swatton says.
Almost every member of Day’s team – a group that includes long-time manager Bud Martin, now-fulltime caddie Reardon, as well as mind coach Jason Goldsmith and strength and conditioning coach Luke Mackey – have been around for many years. This, Swatton says, “excites” Day. “Because he knows that the people around him know him and his game well enough to know what he did when he was at No.1 and what it’s going to require to get him back to that top position,” Swatton says.
Swatton feels the key to Day’s success will be maintaining the dynamic and adaptable style of golf he has always played. “He has a game that is meant to travel – and I mean that from a sense that, even though he’s a high ball-hitter, he can manage to move the ball around and flight it in different directions.”
Asked whether Day can still win majors, Swatton says, “Absolutely. I don’t even have to hesitate in saying that. I think he has the ability to win internationally, at an Open Championship. He also hits his irons sky-high and has a world-class short game, so that’s why he has always felt comfortable around Augusta National (where Day was runner-up on debut in 2011, third to Adam Scott in 2013 and T-5 behind Tiger Woods in 2019). Jase wants to give his career everything he’s got to try to achieve what he wants to achieve in the next few years. I think definitely, he has the ability to still be in the conversation come Sunday of a major. I think he still has what it takes to win on the PGA Tour.”
While Day’s game is malleable to all four of the majors, he is particularly licking his lips thinking about this month’s PGA Championship at Quail Hollow. Day won the 2018 Wells Fargo tournament at the famed Charlotte course, not to mention he is a past PGA Championship winner, having lifted the Wanamaker Trophy 10 years ago. In 2017, when Quail Hollow last hosted the PGA Championship, Day was well in contention through two rounds.
“I definitely feel like I have the mental game to win majors,” he says, “and also that when I get things flying again with my mental process, I feel like that’ll catch up pretty quickly, too.”
