Day says he will carry the lesson while chasing his first PGA Tour win this year at the BMW Championship at Colorado’s Castle Pines Golf Club.

At the Paris Olympics, Day tied for ninth, seven shots shy of gold medallist and world No.1 Scottie Scheffler.

“It taught me that it’s not always about the money that we play for,” Day said.

“It taught me the urgency of ‘hey, I need to go out there and try and do something to win’.

“That is what you need out here (on the PGA Tour).

“Sometimes you can get a little bit comfortable out here, going ‘yeah, top-10 is not too bad, top-five is not too bad’.

“But when you are playing with some urgency, when your back is pushed against the wall … that’s a level of motivation, a level of playing that I would love to be in all the time.

“It’s just sometimes you just kind of get in your own way and you’re like ‘yeah, a top-10 is pretty good here this week’.

“But that’s not the mentality. You have to go out and try to win every single week.

“That’s kind of what I got out of it: you’re either going to finish one, two or three or it’s not good enough.”

Day enters the BMW Championship, the second round of the $US100 million ($A148 million) FedEx Cup playoff series, ranked 25th on cup standings.

“It taught me that it’s not always about the money that we play for.” – Jason Day.

The former world No.1 would need a horror tournament, and a batch of lower-ranked golfers to out-perform him, for him to miss the 30-man field for the Tour Championship finale where the winner collects $US18 million ($A26.7 million).

Day, who won the BMW Championship in 2015, has only four top-10 finishes from his 19 PGA Tour events this season.

“Obviously I haven’t played as solid as I would like to,” he said.

“So I’ve just got to work on a few things, I have been constantly trying to work on my swing to just feel a certain shot and I’m just kind of working on that right now.

“But overall, I feel like my short game is good, my putting feels good.

“Just kind of work out the swing and find something this week would be good.”

While Day has some wriggle room, fellow Australians Adam Scott (41st on cup standings) and Cam Davis (49th) face stiffer challenges in Colorado to rise up the ranks and make the field for the lucrative Tour Championship at East Lakes Golf Club in Atlanta starting August 29.