Jason Day: Under Par In 31 Of Last 33

Watching Jason Day stumble around Conway Farms in 69 today was arguably more impressive than his opening 61-63. After all, the real sign of playing on another stratosphere in this goofy game is not necessarily how low you go, but how well you manage the not so great days.

While I'm still not sold on this becoming the year of Day after Jordan Spieth's historic major run, he's making things interesting.

Ryan Lavner, in his GolfChannel.com third round story from the BMW Championship, offered this:

Day has played 33 rounds since early June. He has signed for an over-par score in only two of them. In other words, it’ll take a super-low round to even challenge him.

“It’s almost playing golf darn near perfect,” Fowler said.

Though Day has a suspect record with a 54-hole lead – 3-for-9 – he has closed out his last two victories, including at the PGA. Coughing up a six-shot advantage would tie a Tour record.

Dottie: Entitlement Attitude Plaguing America's Women Golfers

As the Solheim Cup is about to start, we're reminded again on the eve what makes these matches fun: emotions run high! Including from the outside, where first Jaime Diaz and now a former assistant captain, player and a confirmed patriot in Dottie Pepper is providing some nice bulletin board for our ladies on the eve of the matches.

Team events bringout the emotion!

Pepper writes:

As an assistant captain, I saw an American team two years ago that was completely outplayed by a brilliant team from Europe, but the stage was set, I believe, by an attitude of privilege -- the negative and synonymous descriptions listed above -- by some key players. Players who needed to set the tone for a let's-get-the-job-done week, rather than an attitude of inconvenience and entitlement. It's not about face paint and time set aside for team manicures, or whose stilettos cost more and are a quarter-inch higher, or hair stylists and makeup artists.

Zing!

This could pertain to any team match, male or female:

It's about conserving energy for a weeklong marathon, being positive about preparations, carving out the time to make sure you understand the intricacies of the golf course and the rules that will be in play that week. It's about doing what your captain asks, even if it means staying off social media during a weather delay. It's about doing things that are not normal -- not your own selfish routine -- because the Solheim Cup is anything but normal.

"Why Haven't We Gotten Behind Lydia Ko?"

That's a question posed by Shane Bacon and it's a legit one as the golf community fawns over Jordan Spieth while the outside sports world yawns at both of these talents.

There are legitimate reasons to see why Ko-mania hasn't overtaken the game: she just won the fifth major that wasn't a major until recently and she's really a quality person whose only discernable neuroses was in caddie hiring, hardly making her unusual. But as we know, the world struggles with people who are pretty much all-around likeable.

That said, Bacon makes a statement that hits home, even for this Young Tom Morris fanboy.

She's already the greatest teenage golfer, male or female, in the history of golf, and now she's winning the biggest of the big with final rounds that match what Johnny Miller did at Oakmont back in 1973.

We as golf fans, and sports fans, need to do better on this front. Ko is making history. It's our responsibility to start paying attention.

He's right. She is the greatest teenager the game has ever seen.

Spieth is a nice guy too for an old man in his early 20s. He's super accessible and yet network cameras zoom right by him because Tiger Woods is in the same corporate box.

Is it that we want our superstars to be a little weird, a little mysterious and a little dark?

Are Spieth and Ko just too nice for the rest of the sports world to take notice?

How's that for a rhetorical question?

"Like a Labor Day party guest who lingers a few weeks too long, the playoffs are still here."

As golf's playoffs re-appear with a thud after a week off, playoff supporter Jason Sobel says at ESPN.com that one last major tweak is needed: a Labor Day ending.

Unfortunately, if Tim Finchem stays on as Commissioner past next year, such a revision seems unlikely merely because unlike his peers at the NFL, Finchem is about what's best for his image and bonuses, not the common sense fan perspective.

Sobel with the backstory:

It all dates back to a rare miscalculation from PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem, who theorized nearly a decade ago that the playoffs would coexist in football's domain without any real issues.

"This is not just an event that's scheduled out there as an island into football," he said at the time. "This is a series of events that starts before football, runs two weeks pre-NFL, runs two weeks into NFL, is all tied together. ... I think it's like a growing tide during the course of the year; it will carry us in and have really solid ratings. We'll get nicked if it's a huge football game, but ... I feel very bullish about it."

The real head-scratcher is there is a fairly simple solution to this problem.

Think about it: With minimal tweaking, the playoffs could finish on Labor Day, perhaps on the West Coast, offering so many fans a primetime finale not just to the season, but the summer. If the hushed hum of golf telecasts resonates as one of the season's traditional sounds, then the last one should signify a conclusion to this time period, a gentle whisper that it's time to go back to school, back to work and, yes, back to the fantasy football draft room.