The 'next one' was the US PGA Championship, one of golf's big four titles. In trying very hard, he would leave the world's best players in his wake to card a record 20 under par at Wisconsin's Whistling Straits course, the lowest total recorded in a major tournament, anywhere.

Mind-blowing as they are, statistics and records don't do the Day story any justice. Not even close. In victory, the 27-year-old from the Queensland town of Beaudesert completed a Cinderella story that was the perfect antidote to the nasty invective favoured by certain Australian athletes on a different world stage.

The backstory is almost too touching to be true, although it was hardly a source of enjoyment as the Day family lived the reality. His father Alvin worked on the killing floor of the Beaudesert meatworks, while Day's golf career began when a three-wood found him at the local dump, much the same way as a wand tends to find a wizard.

Alvin would succumb to stomach cancer when Day was just 12. Left bereft the troubled teenager sought solace in alcohol. A desperate Dening would sell their home to roll the dice on her son's golfing talents, hoping that sending him first to a school at Kooralbyn and then Hills College in Jimboomba, south of Brisbane, which would prove a sound investment and provide an escape for her son. Some $US21 million ($28 million) in career earnings and a Major title later, Day has officially arrived, moving up to world No.3 in the process.

The tragedy, the grind, the weight … it was all too much as Day lined up his final putt. He was already in tears well before it safely rolled home.

"He would have thought a lot of thoughts about his father," Dening told Fairfax Media. "But his hard work, his sacrifice … it all came together. This was the ultimate he wanted and to have it now, it really hit him hard."

Dening was in the middle of her shift for a shipping company back in Brisbane as the final round played out. She couldn't even watch it live on television, relying on website updates and messages from friends and family as she went about her business.

Given her son's financial gains, she could have probably had the day off and never returned. But they work hard in the Day family, mother and son. They've never known it any other way.

"The people from a television station came and they showed me the footage when he put it in the hole … he was sobbing. I cried so quickly. I was going to wait until later on to see it so at least if I cried, it wasn't in front of everyone," Dening said.

Day would laud his upbringing after the round, thanking his mother for her endless devotion and reflecting on days when they were so poor she would be out in the stinging Queensland summer cutting the lawn with a knife in lieu of a costly lawnmower.

"That's why a lot of emotion came out on 18. Just knowing that my mum took a second mortgage out on the house, borrowed money from my aunt and uncle, just to get me away from where I was to go to school, seven hours' drive," Day said.

Golf is only part of the reason why Dening beams with pride. Even before he was the PGA champion, Day had grown into a husband and father, always considerate and deeply conscious of his blue-collar beginnings. That means just as much as any trophy.

"It's seeing him as a respectful person, to everyone. He talks nicely to everyone," said Dening, originally from the Philippines, where the win was also appreciated by thousands of fans.

"He conducts himself very well everywhere he goes … he's a real Australian."