SHEBOYGAN, Wis. — Jason Day lost his father to cancer when he was 12. If not for Colin Swatton, he might have lost everything else.
They became surrogate father and son soon after Day arrived at Kooralbyn International School, a 30-minute drive south of his hometown in Beaudesert, Australia. Day's mother, desperate to get her son off the streets and away from a crowd of toughs who prized fighting and drinking, took on a second job to pay the tuition.
Swatton was the golf coach at Kooralbyn and their relationship got off on the wrong foot. The success they patiently and painstakingly crafted since those difficult early days was never more striking than Sunday, when they stood a few yards apart with the Wannamaker Trophy — awarded to the winner of the PGA Championship — sitting on a pedestal between them.