Golf: Day seeks advice from Tiger

Jason Day plays his tee shot during the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. Photo / Getty Images

World number two Jason Day sought out council from Tiger Woods in an effort to regain his killer instinct after his slow start to season 2015-2016.

Day enters this week's World Golf Championships Cadillac Championship, the 16th event of the new season, with just three starts to his name.

Playing scarcely in the early goings is not new for Day, who takes the fall series off, but in 2015 he came to Trump National Doral with a win and two further top four finishes from four starts under his belt.

This year he was 10th in Hawaii, but 15 strokes behind winner Jordan Spieth, missed the cut in his title defence at Torrey Pines while struggling with illness before being T11 at Pebble Beach.

It leaves him ranked 133rd on the season points list.

"It's obviously not the way I wanted to start. I wanted to come out pretty strong and keep that momentum going on from last year, but the three-month break that I had, it's hard to keep that momentum rolling when you go from playing such great golf and then having three months off and only picking up the golf club once," Day said.

"Coming back out and trying to play the way I did the second half of the season last year, is going to be tough. But I'm not panicking."

While it is not panic stations yet, Day did call 14-time major winner Woods and spent almost an hour talking about how to maintain the killer instinct he was able to conjure up in the latter parts of 2015 when he won four of six events, including his first major championship.

"It's amazing to be able to talk to someone that's done it for so long, because he did it for 14, 15 years of just absolutely dominating and killing it," Day said.

"Every time that I talk to him, it's just every time it comes up, it's mind-set, mental toughness, effort.

"It didn't matter how bad it was (for Tiger); if it was a course that he did not like, he was just going to flat out-execute you. It did not matter.

"That's that killer instinct that I need to get back.

Day also wants to try to replicate Woods' dominance atop the world rankings, the American having spent 683 weeks of his career as No.1.

"I just don't want to touch it this time. I want to be able to be there and be like a Rory McIlroy who was there for like 95 weeks or a Greg Norman (331 weeks)," he said.

"The main goal is to be one of those era players where you were dominant for a longer period of time than just four weeks.

"It would be nice to be going, oh, that guy is a former No.1 in the world and he was very dominant in that time period."