Jason Day will be at home in Ohio spending time with his wife and five children when the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics kicks off this Friday. In his place, Day’s childhood mate and caddie on tour, Luke Reardon, will march in the green and gold.

Day, Australia’s top-ranked male, spearheads the men’s Australian golf team alongside Min Woo Lee for next week’s golf tournament at Le Golf National in Versailles. Australia’s women’s team will be comprised of major winners Minjee Lee and Hannah Green.

Former world No.1 Day teed up in the John Deere Classic in the US two weeks ago and headed immediately to Scotland for last week’s Open Championship. At Royal Troon on Sunday, the Queenslander posted a three-under-par 68 that brought his total back to one-over and T11.

What would have been three weeks in a row away from his family in Columbus, Ohio, proved too many for the 2015 PGA champion. Day’s roommate in high school, Reardon, will take his spot in the commencement festivities.

“So I mean, with five kids and my wife, it is too much,” Day said of the opening ceremony. “But Luke, he’s flying out to Paris, on Wednesday to do it. It’s unfortunate that I can’t but hopefully in four more years at LA, I’d love to do it then.”

It will be Day’s debut in the Olympics having skipped the 2016 edition in Rio de Janeiro due to concerns about how the Zika virus in Brazil would affect his wife’s pregnancies as their gamily grew in numbers. In 2021, Day was in a form slump around the 2021 games in Tokyo and didn’t make the team.

Day said apart from Tiger Woods, Olympic swimmers Kieran Perkins and Ian Thorpe were his sporting heroes growing up. He even wrote about their impact on his sporting dreams in assignments in school.

“I did an essay on Kieran Perkins and Ian Thorpe when we were in school,” Day said. “They were my two heroes, because we were really good at swimming and that is the thing Australians were known for, our swimming. I can remember watching Grant Hackett a lot, and also Geoff Huegill. Those were the guys I loved to watch. That was something that I always watched.”

Day and the Australian team will stay in Versailles and not in the Olympic village. But the 36-year-old said he was eager to attend other sports knowing it could be his only Olympics.

“We are a little far out, but I would love to try [watch some events],” he said. “It’s kind of weird, because now these days – before, from what I could understand, if you were an athlete, you could flash your badge and walk in, but that’s not the way it works anymore. You kind of have to trade tickets, so I’m just going to get in and have a chat to the team and see if there’s anything close by that we can kind of go over to, because it would be great to try to catch some Aussies play whatever sport that is close by.”