A two-time winner of the tournament, Day’s first start at the famed cliffside Californian layout was at the 2004 Callaway World Junior Championship, that victory solidifying his global stature as a player of great promise.

Little more than a decade later he was a Major champion and had reached his boyhood goal of becoming the No.1 player in the world but it is a recent history of injury frustration that he is now desperate to leave behind.

Currently ranked 43rd in the world, the 33-year-old’s last PGA TOUR win came almost three years ago at the Wells Fargo Championship but he starts this year with a new swing coach, high aspirations and a body he is confident won’t fail him again.

“The biggest motivation for me is that where I’m ranked right now, I know that I’m better than that,” said Day, who is expecting his fourth child with wife Ellie in June.

“My big inspiration behind that is to try and get back to No. 1. I’ve been saying it for a while now.  I know I can get back there.  I know I feel like I have the game to do it. It’s developing nicely, I’ve just got to stay healthy. 

“One of my goals this year is to try and stay healthy. A big thing is to get through the year and not use that as an excuse. It would be nice to put this in the rear view mirror and not have to talk about my body and it breaking down.

“I’ve been talking about it for a long, long time now. I’m trying to do the best job I can to make sure that I don’t have to talk about it anymore. 

“The goal this year is to make sure that I stay healthy, and then the inspiration behind me trying to push forward and push for more is the World Ranking.

“My World Ranking is just not where it needs to be and I need to improve that drastically.”

Part of the responsibility of keeping Day fit and playing well now falls on the shoulders of coach Chris Como.

After parting ways with long-time coach Col Swatton midway through last year, Day continued on without a coach before linking with Como, who worked with Tiger Woods between 2014-2017.

“Every time I talked to him he was unbelievable in the knowledge that he had,” said Day, who will start 2021 without an equipment contract in place.

“If you came to him with a problem, he would actually think about it and go, OK, let’s try and figure it out, which is amazing.

“I have a lot of respect for Chris. Obviously working with Tiger and kind of knows the ins and outs of what that took. But I feel like the decision came down to I just respected him as a coach, and then I just felt like it was the right fit.

“When you talk to people, you can kind of tell when guys are switched on or when guys aren’t switched on or when guys are kind of faking it to make it. I felt with the previous conversations I’ve had with Chris, they were very interesting. They go very deep in regards to his thought process and the way that he processes things across to the student.

“When I’ve had conversations with him, we sit there and talk about it for a long time, just trying to make sure that we’re trying to solve this problem of why things are happening because of certain things.

“This is my 14th season on TOUR now. I know that a career is long, but I’m trying to do everything I possibly can to get back to where I should be, and I feel like that’s No. 1 in the world.”

As for that first trip to Torrey Pines, it played a critical role in setting Day on a path to success that he hopes has many years still to run.

“I remember when I got there, you could see the banners of previous winners, and you could see the Aussies that have won there, and I was very, very intimidated by all the players,” Day recalled.

“Obviously being in Australia you’re so far away and you’re typically playing against the same group of guys. But then when you go to the World Junior it’s a different group of guys, and it was very intimidating. I was so nervous the last day, I couldn’t eat my breakfast. 

“But looking back on it now, I was so glad that I came across and played. It was such an eye opener to me because I had a great kind of season for me coming over and playing the World Junior, a Callaway PGA Junior tournament and then the Optimist International. 

“Looking back on it from ‘Beauey’, it’s been a pretty cool career so far. I’m hoping to extend that career and take it well into my 40s.”