Jason Day missed putt gives Billy Horschel the win at 2017 AT&T Byron Nelson

Most simply, winning a golf tournament is about finding something on a given week — a swing thought, comfortability, confidence, a fortunate break. It needn’t be much to change the trajectory of a season, or even a career. Fond memories of prior successes often work well as that something. Or, perhaps, it’s just a clearing of the mind after a week of bad headlines.

Seven years prior to Sunday, a 22-year-old Jason Day kicked off his rise to international stardom with his first win as a professional at the 2010 Byron Nelson Championship. He had the memories. He had the narrative of reclamation and return to stardom ready to go for most in the press center on Sunday, seemingly poised to win his first tournament in 12 months with just a couple of holes to play on Sunday.

But instead, it’s all about another type of reclamation — and redemption. After a week of being in the headlines for all the wrong reasons, Billy Horschel picked up the win at the 2017 AT&T Byron Nelson in a playoff over Day. The former top player in the world booted a short 4-foot par putt in the playoff to give the former FedExCup champ in Horschel his first win on Tour since his big 2014 end-of-season payday.

But for awhile, this day seemed like it might be all about Day — until that miss.

Pulling away from the field by the back nine, Horschel, James Hahn, and Day all provided a back-and-forth, up-and-down final round that provided as much as one could ask for in a Sunday finish. Hahn, a two-time winner on the PGA Tour, held the advantage until the 14th, where a bogey left the door open for Horschel and Day to tie him at the top with four holes to play. From there, things got wild.

First, Horschel sunk a bomb on the 14th to equal Day and Hahn at the top of the leaderboard.

Then, with all three tied on the 15th, Day seized the moment with this hole-out for birdie to grab the solo lead.

But Horschel punched right back with a birdie on the par-5 16th to set up for the playoff, where’d he take the win after Day missed on the first playoff hole.

As much as we’d like to whip ourselves into a frenzy about a return to competitiveness, this is the Byron Nelson — a totally fine and good tournament. But Four Seasons is a relatively stock TPC-type track. Lengthy, difficult, and one where Day has plenty of fond memories. It is not, say, Erin Hills.

To add to that, this performance was hardly vintage Jason Day. There wasn’t any sort of throat-stepping moment where it seemed obvious that holy shit this guy’s back. It wasn’t a blowout. This was a grind that ended in a calamitous missed short putt to lose. Hanging with Horschel and Hahn will probably not give you the win at a course like Erin Hills.

But, perhaps, it might! Golf is weird and stupid, and if you’re a Tour pro is at a point of comfortable confidence — that might be all you need. A simple, high-level cursory eye test might say that Day doesn’t feel quite as comfortable on the golf course as he did at his peak just over a year ago.

Heck, of course he doesn’t! Within the last year, he’s had his mother been diagnosed with lung cancer, his wife be hospitalized after being run over by LeBron James, and himself seemingly acquiring every virus within a 70-mile radius of his Ohio home. Day is not a robotic automaton, an emotional guy who is not Woodsian in his partition between life and golf. He is authentic, caring, compassionate — a family man first (at least from the outsider’s view) that beat nearly every dang set of odds in the world to make it to this point. Once making it to the top, he deserved some time to care about golf a little less.

Day won seven golf tournaments in 17 months in a stretch just ending over a year ago. He’s given us plenty. But with his mother now recovering and doing well and his golf game mirroring it, this should be a signal that he’s well on his way to more.

As long as he can make four-footers, of course.