If Jason Day could go back eight years he would look at himself in the mirror and have a very frank conversation.
The Australian golfing great was world No.1, and had recently added a PGA Championship and a Players trophy to his growing cabinet.
But he declined the opportunity to represent his country at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
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“It was an easy decision back then for me to make,” Day told Australian media – including Wide World of Sports – on Friday morning.
“Looking back on it, if I was to give myself a bit of advice I’d say ‘hey, let’s take a step back, really think about it and go down and represent Australia’.”
On Friday, Day was one of four golfers named to represent Australia in Paris next month.
He will team up with rising star Min Woo Lee, while Minjee Lee and Hannah Green will compete in the women’s draw.
For the 2015 major champion, a Games appearance has been a long time coming.
Day was at the top of his game and world No.1 in the rankings when he said no to wearing the green and gold on the world’s biggest sporting stage in Rio.
No one could have predicted the rollercoaster he’s since endured – on a professional and personal level.
A horror run of debilitating injuries saw the Aussie slip from No.1 to No.178 in the space of five years.
Away from the course, his mother was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2017 and she died aged 65 in March 2022. Day’s father had died from stomach cancer when the golfer was 12 years old.
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His rapid drop from world No.1 to a relative PGA Tour also-ran had many pundits writing off Day’s career.
But he’s experienced a resurgence in the past 18 months that now has him ranked 27th – the highest men’s golfer Australia has to offer.
Lee, 25, is next on the list at No.36, while 2013 Masters champion Adam Scott is ranked No.59.
As for accepting his Olympics invite this time around, Day explained he wasn’t going to let the opportunity slip a second time.
“Back in 2016 I was coming off winning the Players Championship and I was No.1 in the world, and at the time I was… starting to get burnt out physically and mentally,” he said on Friday.
“I was trying to get ready for the Fed Ex Cup, and with where the Olympics positioned itself, on top of that we were trying to have another child.
“It was unfortunate that I didn’t give myself a real sit-down and think about it. It was kind of strange the way the media… said ‘hey this year is the Olympics, are you excited?’ – growing up as a kid we never thought golf was going to be part of the Olympics, so it was hard to have a certain emotion about the Olympics when you were never a part of it.
“To say the politically correct things were obviously important, because no one wants to go out there and say ‘hey I don’t want to represent Australia’… but it was never like that.
“It was a decision based around schedule, based around my family, trying to have another child… and with the Zika virus in South America.
“It was never regret, it’s not that, it was just like ‘I should have played’ – I should have gone down, I would have given myself the best opportunity at winning a medal just because of how well I was playing.”
Professional golfers can earn millions of dollars a year in prizemoney alone.
Day himself has collected more than USD$60 million since joining the PGA Tour in 2008.
It’s why the addition of major professional sports at the Olympics comes with debate, given it’s often not the pinnacle for the athletes.
But if Day was once in that camp of that thinking, he says he now views an Olympic medal as a serious and realistic goal.
“A lot of people sacrifice a lifetime worth of heartache and pain and hard work and dedication to be able to represent their country at an Olympics, and I’m sitting there taking it for granted a little bit,” he said.
“It’s unfortunate that it’s taken me a little while to realise that.
“I feel very blessed and thankful that I worked hard and have been given an opportunity to represent Australia at this Olympics.”