Jason Day Tried Wild Way to Manipulate His Putter at U.S. Open, and It Actually Worked

Josh Wilson | Jun 14, 2025

Jason Day gained 2.3 strokes on the field in his putting game Friday in the 2025 U.S. Open. / Bill Streicher-Imagn Images

Jason Day scored nine strokes better (three under par) in round two of the U.S. Open than his first round (six over par). His new putter had a lot to do with it.

Except... It's not new, of course. That would be against the rules now that the tournament at Oakmont Country Club has started. It's just... customized.

Day admitted his improved game on the green was likely thanks to a change he made to the club. He didn't like the way his putter was playing after the opening round and bent it to open it up a bit.

While one might think a 13-time PGA Tour winner would have some sophisticated method for adjusting his clubs' bend angle, one would be left mistaken.

"Just manually bent it myself, stood on it," Day said via GOLF.com. "That’s kind of how I used to do it back in the day. It just hadn’t been looking very good to me personally, kind of looks a little bit hooded, the grip’s on a little bit closed too, so that’s not a positive for me. But I bent it enough to make it look more open, which is good.”

His putting was great on day two, going from 1.64 strokes lost to 2.3 strokes gained on day two. That was the major difference across the two days where he hit 11 greens in regulation in both of the first two rounds (though he did find three more fairways on Friday than Thursday).

Day enters Saturday tied for 12th in the U.S. Open at Oakmont Country Club.

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Published Jun 14, 2025

JOSH WILSON

Josh Wilson is the news director of the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. Before joining SI in 2024, he worked for FanSided in a variety of roles, most recently as senior managing editor of the brand’s flagship site. He has also served as a general manager of Sportscasting, the sports arm of a start-up sports media company, where he oversaw the site’s editorial and business strategy. Wilson has a bachelor’s degree in mass communications from SUNY Cortland and a master’s in accountancy from the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois. He loves a good nonfiction book and enjoys learning and practicing Polish. Wilson lives in Chicago but was raised in upstate New York. He spent most of his life in the Northeast and briefly lived in Poland, where he ate an unhealthy amount of pastries for six months.