Jason Day makes his return to PGA Tour action for the first time since the Masters last month after revealing he has been battling bouts of vertigo again.
Day has been in excellent form this season, breaking back inside the world’s top-50 with five top-10 finishes in eight starts as he continues his comeback season.
The Australian has knocked on the winner’s door on multiple occasions this year without being let in and after a run to the quarter-finals in the WGC Dell MatchPlay he emerged as a contender for the Masters at Augusta National the week after. He was seen receiving treatment during his match with Scottie Scheffler however, and then saw a good start at the Masters fizzle out into a T39 finish and Day admits he had been suffering from vertigo again.
“So last round of the Masters I had vertigo, so that was obviously not fun to play in that final round. We had to finish our third round Sunday morning and then I was sitting in the caddie hut and that’s when I got vertigo,” said the 35-year-old.
“I mean, I was supposed to play RBC, that was on the schedule to play and then pulled out because of that and had to go back and run some tests. I think it’s just hard because when you feel like you’re running on all cylinders, you’re making a lot of birdies, you’re doing a lot of good things, it’s difficult when sometimes the health plays a factor. If it’s a back, I understand, but I feel like I’m kind of beyond that now, which has been great because I worked really hard on it. Obviously there’s this sort of thing. So it’s just one thing after another where I just kind of have to peel it back a little bit, kind of understand a little bit more, get a little bit better.
“And then I am under a lot more stress this year than what I was in previous years just because of where I am week in and week out. I’ve been playing a lot better so there’s obviously more stress and when you have more stress, your immune system can get compromised and for me it was just unfortunate that happened in the last round.
“But I’ve had three weeks off and I feel like I’m getting a handle on it, which is good, so it will just take some time.”
The former world number one first encountered vertigo at the 2015 US Open in Chambers Bay and has had sporadic bouts of it on top of his injury problems.
“I didn’t want to talk about it too much, especially the Match Play because it was just like a small bout of it, but it really kicked my butt at Augusta. That was like kind of the time where I had to take a step back.
“But overall I know exactly what happened. It is obviously the stress of playing the game, and I understand there’s obviously competitive stress and there’s stress outside the game that is totally separate that everyone goes through as well. When you put yourself under stressful conditions all the time, sooner or later your immune system gets compromised. I wasn’t eating as healthy as I should have, so I made some changes to my diet.
“Then, yeah, it’s a virus that attacks my inner ear, which is the vestibular nerve in the ear, so when that happens you can’t get rid of a virus obviously, the only way you can do it is suppress it. I just needed to take some time off, that was pretty much plain and simple. And then obviously on top of it just rework how I come to the golf course and work as well.”
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