Jason Day said he is hungry to hole out for eagle early Friday and finish with a 59, but admitted to being unaware of the feat throughout the BMW Championship first round.
Day leads the second-to-last FedEx Cup playoffs event by four shots, after a storm Thursday halted first-round play at the Conway Farms Golf Club in Lake Forest, Ill., near Chicago. He finished the round at 61, four strokes ahead of his nearest rival.
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Playing in a star-studded group featuring the top three players in the playoffs, Day said his rival for the title — Jordan Spieth — kept Day in the loop on his proximity to the magic number.
Day had four birdies and an eagle on the back nine, and teed off on his final first-round hole, No. 9, before the horn sounded, stopping play for the day.
"Obviously I want to hole it," Day told a news conference, of the 44-yard chip awaiting him when he returned to the course Friday. (Holes) seven and eight were close to chipping in for eagles, and unfortunately they didn't go in, but I was definitely trying to push forward as much as possible. I wasn't really thinking about shooting 59. I obviously got an opportunity tomorrow to do it, so that's pretty neat."
He added: "Jordan told me that it was par-71 on nine. I probably should have known that because there's three par-fives, but I wasn't paying attention. I didn't think I'd have an opportunity of shooting 59. Yeah, that's kind of when he told me. He was keeping count for me."
Day joked, though, that Spieth had put a jinx on him being able to card just the seventh sub-60 round on the PGA Tour.
"Jordan, as we're walking up after the horn blew, said that I was going to hole out, and I said back to him, 'Now I'm not going to do it because you said that,'" the US PGA Championship winner recounted.
Day, 27, recalled the only other time he was close to shooting in the 50s, he was in the infancy of his golfing life.
"The only time that I had a chance was Mount Morgan Country Club. It's kind of like in the middle of nowhere," he said. "It's not a country club, it's in the middle of the country, and it's sand greens. I shot 60. I shot 10-under, and it was a 27-hole event. I put my second nine with my third nine, and it wasn't actually official, but that's how I put it. I believe that I shot 60, 10-under.
"And I was 13 at the time."