All in a Day's work.

Byline: Ron Bellamy The Register-Guard

JUNCTION CITY - Is it remarkable that there's this 19-year-old kid from Australia who is being touted as the Next Big Swing, who this year became the youngest player ever to win a PGA Tour-sanctioned event, who's being compared - in his game and build and charisma and work ethic and even mixed ethnicity - to Tiger Woods?

Well, sure, but even more remarkable, perhaps, is the fact that it's this 19-year-old kid, Jason Day.

Who grew up the son of meat workers in Queensland, an Australian father and Filipino mother who met through letters. Whose first golf club was found on a rubbish heap. Who remembers going to St. Vincent de Paul's to get clothes for school, all he could stuff into a bag for $5.

"Some of the stories I could tell you are pretty sad," he said.

Whose father died of cancer, leaving a wife, a daughter and an angry, devastated 12-year-old boy.

Who was headed for trouble then, in the family turmoil that followed his father's death, and sent off to boarding school, a golf academy, where the rebellion continued.

"I was headed in the direction where it's either good or bad," he said.

And where he met the coach who became his mentor and friend and caddie.

And where, eventually, he read a book, about another golfer who was considered a prodigy as a teenager.

Tiger Woods.

"He's a big role model, obviously for me and a lot of people," Day said. "He's influenced my life dramatically. He's the one big reason I started practicing harder. He's the one reason I started playing this tour. If it wasn't for him, I'd be back home in Australia, and not even playing golf."

Instead, Day is here, the third-leading money winner as a rookie on the Nationwide Tour, preparing for the $475,000 Oregon Classic, which runs Thursday through Sunday at Shadow Hills Country Club, and looking forward to next year, when he'll play on the PGA Tour and perhaps even meet, for the first time, the icon who became his inspiration.

"Hopefully in the last round," he said, smiling, knowing that you understand that the leaders play together in the last round. "That would be good."

A year ago, at age 18, Day decided that rather than play in college, he would turn professional.

By then, he'd twice been awarded the Australian Junior Order of Merit, and won the Australian Amateur Stroke-Play Championship, the Australian Junior Championship, World Junior Championship, the Queensland Amateur Championship and the Queensland Medal Championship.

Upon turning pro, he signed a multi-year contract with TaylorMade-adidas Golf, and played in seven PGA Tour events last summer on sponsor's exemptions. He made five cuts, including two top-15 finishes, and later reached the final round of the PGA Tour qualifying tournament.

But he didn't play well enough to earn his PGA Tour card for this year, probably "the first major disappointment" that he'd had in golf. In retrospect, Day said, even though he'd been in boarding school since he was 12, he very much felt the distance from home, from his mother and sister, last year. He's far more comfortable now, and glad that circumstances forced him to play on the Nationwide Tour this year.

"Obviously, this has been a really good learning experience for me," he said.

He was good but not great early in the season - a sixth-place finish in February, fourth place in early May, but also a string of three missed cuts in four tournaments.

But Day has been sensational since then. In his past seven full tournaments - illness forced him out of his last tournament, the National Mining Classic, after one round in late August - Day has a win, a second-place finish, a third, two other top-10 finishes and two top-15 finishes.

In his last 29 rounds, including one in which he was so sick he could barely stand, Day has shot 72 or better 26 times, and in the 60s 19 times, including rounds of 62 and 63 over the last 36 holes in the Cox Classic, matching the Nationwide Tour record for lowest score in consecutive rounds.

The Nationwide Tour's player of the month for July, Day has earnings of $320,589. He ranks first in top-10 finishes, second in all-around stats, fifth in average driving distance (306.8 yards).

His victory came in early July, when he won the Legend Financial Group Classic in Ohio by one stroke.

"That was one of the best ball-striking rounds I've ever had in my life," he said. "Everywhere I wanted to go, I hit it. I still look back on it. That's probably the strongest memory in my head, sinking that last putt. I've won a lot of tournaments, but I've never won it where I had to make a birdie on the last hole. It meant so much to me, because the goal was to win, and be the youngest out there to win."

At 19 years, seven months and 26 days, the youngest player on the Nationwide Tour this year became the youngest winner of a PGA Tour-sanctioned event, younger even then Johnny McDermott, who won the U.S. Open in 1911 at 19 years, 10 months.

Lost, and found

It's true, Day said, that his father gave him his first club, a 3-wood, that he'd found on a trash heap. Day was 3 years old then and used it to whack tennis balls. By 6, he was hitting golf balls, playing a few holes at a local Saturday clinic in his hometown near Brisbane.

When Jason was 12, Alvin Day died of stomach cancer.

"I think you take things for granted until they go away," Jason said. "At a young age, you don't think about people like your dad passing away, and then it really happens, and there's no more dad coming home, you know?

"Losing a family member so young, especially losing your dad, it's a pretty big loss in your family. It broke up our family a lot. My sister and I, we went pretty badly. ... There was me getting in trouble at school, doing stupid stuff."

His mother, Dening, sent him to the golf academy, where Jason met Col Swatton, an instructor there.

"He was going through a rough time in his private life, with his dad and things like that," said Swatton, who became Day's coach and mentor and now, as well, his caddie. "His first two years were pretty rough. After his father passed away, he was pretty rebellious."

There were fights, Day said, and there was alcohol, and while his talent in golf was obvious, he wasn't committed. And then, at 15 or so, he read the book about Woods, saw the scores that Woods posted at his age, and became inspired.

He started getting up at 5 a.m., to work on golf at 5:30. "Golf has changed my life in a lot of ways," he said. "Meeting Col has changed my life in a lot of ways."

Day continues to be a prodigious worker. Tuesday, for example, he planned to spend all day on the practice range at Shadow Hills, with the following regimen:

Wedges, in 10-yard increments from 70 yards to 120 yards, 20 balls at each. Then, shots from 130, 140 and 150 yards, at least 20 balls at each, shaping shots different ways. Then work on technique. Then hit driver and 3-wood. Then chip, and work on bunker shots. And then spend at least 90 minutes on the putting green, sometimes several hours.

"He works very hard," Swatton said. "He works harder than most out here, and he's very, very hard on himself."

Day said he might hit 400 to 500 balls in a day, not as much as people think, because he's deliberate about each shot.

"I want to become No. 1 in the world," he said. "I was taught in my life, by my parents, that you don't get anywhere without working hard."

Still a teenager

Day turns 20 in November and considers himself, away from the golf course, a fairly typical 19-year-old.

Which means that he likes music, and shooting pool and hanging out at beaches, and snowboarding and jet skiing. And that he's been known to sleep through his alarm clock. And that he recently fixed up his car with a new grille, and new rims, and tinted windows.

Sure, he admits, not every 19-year-old can purchase a 2006 Cadillac Escalade at $60,000. Or purchase a house in Orlando, Fla., which he shares with another golfer, a classmate from boarding school, and which now even has furniture, after having nothing more than an air mattress for a few weeks.

Day bought the furniture in a three-day spree, spending enough that his credit card company called, wondering whether his card had been stolen. "My house is looking good," he said, "and I'm realizing how much it costs to have a house and a car."

He said he's also paid off the mortgage on his mother's house in Australia.

"I'm a kid," he said. "On the golf course, I'm really serious, but get me off the golf course and I'm like any other 19-year-old kid."

A world of potential

Rare is the golfer, 19 or otherwise, who can generate the kind of club-head speed the 6-foot-1, 180-pound Day can; when he was tested by TaylorMade, he was swinging a 5-iron at 105 miles per hour, and can generate 125 mph with his driver.

"He drives the ball well," Swatton said. "He's not the longest out here, but long enough to be competitive on all the par fives. He's got good iron play. His putting is very good. He's just an all-around package. A lot of people say he's got the maturity of a 30-year old on the body of a 19-year-old, which is great."

Though noted for his aggressive play, Day said what he's learned most in this year on the Nationwide Tour is patience.

"A couple of years ago, I wouldn't be so patient," he said. "I'd think, `I've got to go for it, I've got to go for it.' But out here, if you want to win, you've got to stay in the game, and stay in the here-and-now. ...

"I'm very aggressive when it comes to golf. If I get a sniff of anything, I'll try to grab it and go for it. If there's a gap in a tree, I'll go for it. But now I've learned that there are certain situations, that there's a time and a place to go for it."

That patience is reflected in his demeanor on the golf course, where Day said "you'll hardly ever see me be angry, because there's not time to be angry. I'm just happy to be here and playing."

And to think it all started with a golf club rescued from the trash, by the late father of whom Day often thinks.

"I think he'd be happy seeing me now," he said. "I think he'd be happy, seeing me on the tour, playing well, and obviously growing up."

Especially that, perhaps.