Jason Day flirted with becoming the second Australian to win a green jacket, hanging around the top of the leaderboard at the 90th Masters Tournament for three rounds and then into Sunday, before ultimately missing out to back-to-back champion Rory McIlroy.

It’s no secret that Day has embraced his equipment free agency and his strong play at Augusta National was helped by this. In the month leading up to the Masters, Day spent plenty of time working with Avoda Golf’s CEO and Co-founder, Tom Bailey, to perfect a set of irons, developing certain wedge grinds and soles to fit his short-game characteristics, and returned to some of the oldies that worked best for him.

On-site this week at the RBC Heritage, GolfWRX caught up with Day to talk through his equipment journey.

GolfWRX: New wedges obviously spoke with Tom, some sole design on that which has influenced the irons previously. Maybe talk about what you’re seeing with them and what you’re testing out.

Jason Day: Yeah, so essentially what had happened is that when I started working with Avoda, now just to let you know that I don’t get paid by Avoda. I use them freely just to let you know. So I can be very critical of anything that I use, which is nice.

But working with Avoda was kind of unique in a sense that they were able to build anything that I wanted to see. Whether that’s more offset, onset, more curve to the face, less curve to the face, the thicker top line, how did I want to see the toe, if the iron head was symmetrical, and then we got down to the sole and essentially what the sole does for me is that obviously there’s that beveled edge, but the lean of the sole matches my forward press of my actual swing.

So what we get out here essentially is we have all the OEMs and they have their set of ions that they like to sell, like their tour version and obviously their version that is for the more the weekend warrior.

And what I’ve been able to do with Avoda or what Avoda has helped me with, is be able to create a, so that’s based off my impact, and that has helped me tremendously through the hitting zone. If I use, let’s just say for instance, Scottie’s (Scheffler’s) P7TWs, I may dig the ground a little bit more because I might be a little steeper than he is and vice versa.

If I use something that I’m just trying to think off the top of my head, there’s some guys out here that have Adam Schenk, he has a really big soul on his iron, and that would bounce out of the turf for me. So long story short, we’re able to match my forward press at impact and really help me be able to consistently strike the ball a lot better. And I think over time you’ll probably start to see custom soul designs for every one of these guys at some point.

GolfWRX: I also saw going back to the older irons that you’ve been working with, you’re seeing too much curve…

Day: Yeah, so at the start of my journey with Avoda, is essentially I wanted to go more towards a draw-bias swing, and I’ve never been one of those guys, I’ve always been a pretty zero’d, neutraled-out person,” Day said. “So zero is good, but unfortunately, you get the left miss and the right miss. … There’s no one way miss in golf. There are two-way misses. Everyone has them, some guys just have a little bit less than one side to the other side.

But I started out with the prototypes, the version ones, and I was hitting them very straight and they do like to go straight because it’s onset, there’s no offset in them at all. So they look very square. And then I came back and I said, look, can we build a version two and maybe make a little bit more offset somewhere between my, I think it was the (TaylorMade) P7CBs or something like that … and make the top line thinner.

And they came back and there was some slight vibration in ’em and they were turning too much. So we went back to a version three. We halved the offset between straight onset and offset. There’s so much going on right now. I use those at the start of the year, but then I had too much of a bias left, so I had this kind of left shot. Now I’m not saying that I don’t have left shot … but the consistency has come in a lot more and I can definitely see it in my stats. I’m hitting a lot more greens and it feels much better in the way that the club obviously goes through the turf, but the way it looks on the ground, I’m not reacting to a club that looks like it’s kind of left. And sometimes when you are looking down as a player and you see the club look a certain way, you’ll react to it not knowing that you’re reacting to the way the club looks.”

GolfWRX: I’d be remiss to ask, obviously lots of technology going into the irons you’re in right now, but then we’re seeing a lot of older woods, driver, you’re in the Stealth still. What’s the thought process around that?

Day: Yeah, I’m not saying that the technology that they have now isn’t good. The technology that all the OEMs are putting out right now, fantastic.

I just think it comes down to what the player really likes do. They may have really good experience and really good memories from a driver that they used five years ago. If we take Aaron Ray for instance, he’s using an M6 and he really loves that feeling obviously I think that may have cracked and he’s using a different driver now, but he used that driver for a very long time and he had really good success with it. So it’s just more of a preference saying when guys stand up there, they want to know that, Hey, what are my shots doing? And I have trust in this driver to be able to go from here to there the best when you haven’t had enough hits with some other drivers or if you’re changing every, let’s say six months or a year, then it’s just hard to build up the character or at least know what the characteristics of that club would like to do.

GolfWRX: Are you enjoying building a bag like this now as a free agent?

Day: I am enjoying it. I think when I was probably one of the only guys to not have a club manufacturer as a partner. And I think there was some other guys out here doing it, but I was one of the only few. And it’s great in a sense that you can try everything, but it’s also bad because you can try too much and you can tinker too much.

I think I am starting to settle. I say that, and I just got a Ping Mini in the bag this week. Yeah, which is good. You kind of need the 280 to 290 range, and the 3-wood may not go as far, you know what I mean? So it’s a good addition. But yeah, I’m starting to settle on a good driver. I’ve always liked the Ping G430. I like the Ping mini prototype. That feels fantastic. Right now, I’ve got an M6 3-wood, Qi10 5-wood, and a Stealth 7-wood. And then obviously the rest are Avoda and obviously a custom Spider putter.