Tears On The 18th

Jason Day won the PGA Championship on August 16 and cried on the 18th green.

He cried when he walked up on to the green and before his final putt. He cried after he sank the putt to become the first PGA competitor to set a major championship record 20 under par.

The man has followed a tough road. He is 27 years old.

His father died of stomach cancer when Day was 11 years old. Day was an alcoholic by the age of twelve. His mother was desperate and took out a second mortgage on their home to send Jason to an international boarding school with a reputation for grooming top athletes.

He took up golf and rose to the professional level, flirting with success for five years now, coming close but never winning a major.

So this was big. It was huge and obviously meant everything to Jason Day.

Professional athletes are unique because of the enormous amount of work and personal sacrifice it takes to compete at that level.

Us wee folk know nothing about that because, after a certain point in our lives, all our energy is spent on survival.

Grinding out a job that pays only enough to allow us to live just short of dignity.

Professional athletes are unique because if and when they achieve a championship they realize a lifelong dream, a tangible reward for decades of single-minded hard work.

Us wee folk are rewarded with retirement if we live that long, and hopefully a retirement that doesn't end abruptly on its very first day, felled by a fatal heart attack as you leisurely stroll out to get the morning paper.

Many pros cry when they get that first championship. That is the way life is supposed to work.

You identify a dream early on, you work your ass off in the dark and alone in your heart until you achieve that goal.

Then you break down because success is so overwhelming when you put so much into it.

I have a great deal of respect for champs who cry in victory. It says everything about what it means to be human, it says everything about how life is supposed to be scripted.

Champs who suck it up and hold their emotions back are not being tough. They are cheating their fans of this glimpse of how life would feel if any of us had an actual shot at success.

I had tears in my eyes as Jason Day cried with his son in his arms, as he kissed his wife, as he hugged his caddy.

Any time I see life in purity as it was intended, my cheeks are bathed.