Jason Day Joins Bridgestone – Key Takeaways

Former World No. 1 Day joins Bridgestone’s Tour Staff Day joins Tiger, Bryson, Fred Couples, Lexi Thompson and Matt Kuchar He’ll be gaming the 2022 Bridgestone TOUR B X

It’s not as earth-shattering as the day it signed the world’s 650th ranked player, but today’s news from Bridgestone is noteworthy. The word out of Covington, GA is former World No. 1 Jason Day is joining the Bridgestone Tour Staff starting this weekend in Orlando at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

Terms of the multiyear deal are unannounced, but Bridgestone does say Day will be playing the 2022 Tour B X “for the foreseeable future.” Day joins Tiger, Bryson, Matt Kuchar, Fred Couples and Lexi Thompson in the Bridgestone stable.

“We’ve been working with him for over a year now,” Bridgestone Golf Ball Fitting Manager Adam Rehberg tells MyGolfSpy. “He’s very comfortable with the ball now and he wants to be a bigger part of the team.”

A Long Day’s Journey

Day started experimenting with the Bridgestone TOUR B XS nearly two years ago, after playing with Tiger at Bay Hill. He was still under contract with TaylorMade at the time but asked Tiger for a sleeve of his balls to try. After his TaylorMade deal ran out, Day put the XS into play on his own without a deal.

“But as you guys have said, the Tiger ball doesn’t fit everybody,” Rehberg told us. “It can be way too spinny, even for a guy like Jason Day. He already had plenty of spin around the greens, but he found with the XS he was getting some floaty shots with his 6- through 9-irons. The X was a little more stable for him.”

Day switched from the XS to the X last August but finally went through a formal ball fitting with the Bridgestone team last week.

“He liked the XS around the green, but when he’d hit a 9-iron to a back right pin, he’d come up a little short and spin it back even more,” says Rehberg. “Then he hit the X and we looked at the data. He’s still spinning the X with his 9-iron around 10,000 RPM. But when he hit the XS, he’d get 11,500 to 12,000 RPM. That’s a lot of spin for a 9-iron.

“A guy like Tiger, he wants all that spin. And he has the ability to take some off. But other guys like to hit stock shots and fitting the ball to that helps them mechanically.”

A Hard Day’s Night

The 34-year-old Day is several years removed from his stay atop the Official World Golf Rankings. After a half-dozen Top 5 finishes in majors, Day finally broke through in 2015. He won that year’s PGA Championship at Whistling Straits and became the first player to finish a major at 20-under-par.

That September Day reached No. 1 in the world after winning the first two legs of the FedEx Cup playoffs. Jordan Spieth reclaimed the top spot a week later. The following year Day would recapture the number one ranking with wins at the Farmers, the WGC-Dell Match Play Championship and the Players.

How hot was Jason Day? In January 2017, he signed a $10 million a year apparel deal with Nike. Back troubles, however, would plague Day for much of the next four years. He hasn’t won on Tour since winning the Farmers for the second time in 2018.

Day was ranked as low as 123rd in the world during that time. He’s been playing better lately, finishing third in this year’s Farmers, and is currently ranked 90th in the OWGR.

“We first talked to him a year ago and he told us he needed to get his swing speed up to a certain number so he could be fully competitive,” says Rehberg. “When we tested him last week, he was well past that number. His swing speed is back and the swing looks smoother and less violent.”

What Does This Mean For Bridgestone?

As Jason Day joins Bridgestone, it’s fair to ask: can he help move the needle?

Currently, Bridgestone and Srixon see-saw between the 4th and 5th slots in golf ball market share, behind Titleist, Callaway and TaylorMade. That pecking order hasn’t changed much, even with Tiger joining the Bridgestone staff in 2016. It’s dicey trying to predict how much Tour presence actually influences ball sales, although Bridgestone will tell you Tiger’s win at The Masters in 2019 was a major boost.

And not for nothing, despite five years of back woes, Day remains a popular figure on Tour.

“You want to talk about a grounded dude?” says Rehberg. “He kept asking us what we needed and if there was anything he could do for us. He was helping us move stuff. So nice, so friendly.

“And when we told him we’re probably a couple of months away from starting the testing process for our 2024 balls, his eyes just got wide. He was shocked that we’d already be working on a new ball.”

Rehberg says Day will join Tiger and Bryson in the two-year prototyping process. And while Bryson attacks the process like it’s work, Rehberg says Day is more like Tiger in that he finds testing an absolute joy.

“We can already tell he’s going to be fun to do R&D testing with,” Rehberg tells us. “He could have stayed out there all day and hit balls with us. And that was just the X versus the XS. We can’t wait to get him involved in prototyping.”

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