In just his third event as a Web.com Tour member, Jason Day found himself in the thick of contention at the 2007 Livermore Valley Wine Country Championship in northern California.

He entered the final round in a tie for second place, trailing only veteran Omar Uresti.

The then-19-year-old Australian might not have been 100 percent focused on golf as he navigated The Course at Wente Vineyards that Sunday, though.

Shortly before teeing off for the final round, he broke up with his longtime girlfriend.

“We broke up the last day of the tournament, and I went out and shot 80,” said Day a few months later. “I should have broken up with her after the tournament. Maybe I could have won it.”

Indeed, Day struggled that day, shooting 43 on the closing nine to fall into a tie for 26th place, when a strong finish would have gone a long way toward securing his first PGA TOUR card for the following season.

No matter, though. The prodigious Day had worlds of talent, as he’s shown time and again throughout an illustrious PGA TOUR career, and as the 2007 Web.com Tour season progressed, he continued to show it.

Day recorded 10 top-25 finishes in 19 Web.com Tour starts that season, including a victory at the Legend Financial Group Classic Presented by Cynergies Solutions, where he became the youngest winner in Web.com Tour history.

That victory in the Cleveland, Ohio suburbs – supplemented by top-3 finishes at the Cox Classic Presented by Chevrolet, and Xerox Classic – guided Day to a fifth-place finish on the money list, and the all-important PGA TOUR card.

Day, of course, took the opportunity and ran with it. He has earned 12 PGA TOUR titles, including THE PLAYERS Championship in 2016, and has held the No. 1 spot in the Official World Golf Ranking. He has overcome a variety of injuries to assert himself as one of the dominant players in the game, and he shows no signs of letting up anytime soon.

And it all started with a full season on the Web.com Tour, when the Australian kid came over to the United States to test his game on a brand-new stage.

“I went through a lot of ups and downs that year,” Day said. “Obviously just coming out to a foreign country, it was hard for me. … I bought a house, I bought a car, I broke up with my longtime girlfriend, so I went through a lot of stress that way. I kind of worked through it, and I had a fantastic year.

“I won once and had several top 10s … I worked pretty hard out there, and obviously I learned a lot about my game and myself. It was a good year for me, good learning curve.”

If not for a bit of serendipity to begin the 2007 season, Day might have had to wait until a later season to prove himself.

He attempted to earn PGA TOUR status at the previous winter’s Qualifying Tournament, but stumbled at Final Stage, opening with rounds of 77-75-77 at PGA West en route to an 119th-place finish. Not only did he fail to secure TOUR status, he didn’t even fare well enough to earn guaranteed starts on the Web.com Tour.

The bit of good fortune came in the Web.com Tour’s early-season schedule. Day failed to gain entry into the season-opening Movistar Panama Championship, but the season’s second and third events were contested in Australia and New Zealand and were co-sanctioned by the PGA Tour of Australasia.

Day gained entry to those two events via that Tour, going on to finish T31 at the Jacob’s Creek Open Championship, and T6 at the HSBC New Zealand PGA Championship. The money earned those two weeks allowed him to significantly bolster his status after the first reshuffle, and he was able to play a full schedule for the majority of the season.

Ironically, the Livermore Valley Wine Country Championship was played prior to the reshuffle, and Day actually Monday-qualified into the event.

With top-25 finishers guaranteed a spot in the next event, Day’s closing-nine 43 forced him into Monday qualifying for the next event, the South Georgia Classic. Again, he successfully advanced.

Day finished T43 there and didn’t qualify for the next event, the Athens Regional Foundation Classic. Once the reshuffle occurred, prior to the subsequent Henrico County Open, though, he was clear to play a full schedule for the remainder of 2007.

He’s comfortably kept his PGA TOUR card each season since earning it, and Monday qualifiers are well in the rear view mirror.

“I started out with a conditional card; I really had limited starts,” Day said. “All that I was thinking about was that I had to make cuts, instead of making money. In my second event (T6 in New Zealand), I got really ranked.”

Day hit his stride in the summer months, recording four top-5 finishes in a five-event stretch and thereby cementing his spot inside the top 25 on the money list, in the first season where the number of available TOUR cards had increased from 20 to 25.

The now 30-year-old has demonstrated a championship level of patience throughout his successful TOUR career, and he credits his season on the Web.com Tour in laying a strong foundation for his even-keeled approach to competition.

“I had a lot of starts in the leading groups before I actually won … I was out there and I’d try to win straight away, and you can’t do that,” Day said. “I went out a couple times and shot a pretty bad score, and I’d always go back after each round and have a look at what I could improve on.

“The last round in Cleveland, when I won, it was just a perfect ball-striking round, and the biggest thing for me was that I stayed patient. My emotions stayed level, and I didn’t get hot or cold.”

A perspective that has served Day well so far in his career, and will surely continue to do so.