Publications
Partners
Lake Forest - Jason Day has always struggled to sleep but the 27-year-old Australian's weekend at the BMW Championship was more restless than most.
His insomnia did not stem from trying to win the tournament, he had won three in his last five starts, or maintain his place atop the lucrative FedEx Cup standings.
What kept him awake was the fact that he was about to fulfill a long-cherished dream - of becoming golf's top ranked player.
"It's been very, very difficult for me to try and downplay getting to number one because I've really wanted to reach this goal for a very long time now," Day said after his six-shot victory.
"The last two days were very, very emotional for me, very hard to sleep at night."
The wire-to-wire victory helped him achieve the goal he and his coach and caddie Colin Swatton had set when Day was still an unruly teenager in a boarding school.
"We said we were trying to get to No. 1 in the world at 22. That was our whole plan. I'm five years late but it's better late than never, right?" Day says.
"Our plan had technical, tactical, physical and mental parts. You have to fill all of those buckets up. I think the last thing that was lacking was the mental bucket.
"I was working on all these things and starting to fill those buckets up, opening that tap, letting it drip."
The first blow to his mental state came when an 18-year-old Day first announced his intentions to the golfing world, and it blew up in his face.
"I want to chase Tiger (Woods) and my goal is to become the number one golfer in the world," the confident youngster then said.
"That's been my goal since I was a little kid. If I work hard on what I need to, I'm sure I can take him down."
