Jordan Spieth hasn’t failed too often, so when he does it reverberates through the golf world. But who would expect him to fail?
He didn’t when he was 12 and shot 62 to win a tournament. Or when he played in his first PGA Tour event at the age of 16 and finished 16th.
In a state known for producing great players, he was the first to win three consecutive Texas high-school championships at the highest classification. He went to college for one year and led the University of Texas to the national title. At 19, he became the youngest player in 82 years to win a PGA Tour event, surviving a three-man playoff at the John Deere Classic.
So, two months ago, when he was leading the Masters all by himself for 65 holes — 137 if you go back to 2015 — who would have doubted he would become only the fourth player to repeat as Masters champion?
Who would have doubted he would become the first player to twice win the green jacket in wire-to-wire fashion?
Who would’ve thought he would build a five-shot lead with four consecutive birdies and blow it all on the final nine holes?
C’mon. Fail? Really?
“It was bad timing on a poor miss,” Spieth said about what happened that Sunday afternoon in April when anyone who was watching — in person or on television — couldn’t believe what they had just seen.
Jordan Spieth can indeed fail.
Now America wants to see if their young gunslinger can get back up, dust himself off and hop right back in the major-championship saddle.
Spieth comes to the 116th U.S. Open at Oakmont Country Club as the defending champion and No. 2 player in the world, and he has a chance to make up for what happened at Augusta. He will try to do what no player has done since Curtis Strange in 1989 — repeat as U.S. Open champion. And he will attempt to do so at Oakmont, a course he had never seen until an early-May practice round.
There is no reason to expect him not to contend … or win. In the past five majors, Spieth has won two, finished second twice and missed a three-man playoff in the British Open by a shot. Crazy as it seems, he could have won all five.
“We’ve been spoiled the last five, having a chance to win each of them,” Spieth said. “I’d love for that to keep going. It’s a lot of fun. We enjoy it. That’s what we love to do. We recognize that’s not necessarily normal to have a chance at that many in a row, but why do what’s normal?”
There is nothing normal about Jordan Spieth.
Maturity in youth
Spieth is part of the new Big Three, along with No. 1 Jason Day and No. 3 Rory McIlroy. But he is the one everyone wants to see.
At 21, he became the second youngest player to win the Masters — Tiger Woods beat him by six months in 1997 — and the youngest since Bobby Jones in 1923 to win the U.S. Open. He won five times in 2015, following his two major titles with a victory in the Tour championship that clinched the FedEx Cup.
But, with one hurried heel shot compounded moments later by a poor decision, people wondered how Spieth would respond to the adversity he endured in the long shadows at the Augusta National Golf Club. Incredibly, some wondered if he would win again. With just one bad swing, seemingly everything that Spieth had accomplished at such an incredibly young age was forgotten.
“It will continue to be mentioned maybe until we have a chance to win and win the Masters again,” Spieth said. “Something like that will always stick around unfortunately.”
But a funny thing happened on his way to Ricky Barnes. Spieth won the Dean & DeLuca Invitational at Colonial Country Club in Irving, Texas, not far from where he was born and lives in Dallas. He did it by making six birdies on the back nine on Sunday, including an impressive three in a row to close his round. One of those was a Spieth-like moment — holing an improbable pitch from behind the green at No. 17.
It was the first time Spieth won a professional tournament in his native state. It was also his eighth PGA Tour victory before the age of 23, one more than Tiger Woods managed at a similar stage.
More important, the victory came just three starts after what happened at Augusta National. It wasn’t a major, but it felt like one to the young Texan.
'He didn’t have his best stuff and it was his tournament to win, which is wild to say that without having your best stuff you can be running away with the golf tournament like he was.'
“This day is a moment that will go down, no matter what happens in the next 30 years, as one of the most important days I’ve ever had,” Spieth said after winning at Colonial.
Just like that, the victory quieted the orchestra of negativity that has surrounded Spieth since he tossed away the Masters and a large slice of history with two balls in Rae’s Creek. Good thing, too. A week earlier, playing across town in the final twosome on Sunday at the AT&T Byron Nelson Classic, he shot the day’s high round (74) and finished tied for 18th, serving to only heighten the skepticism.
“Jordan is a world-class player, it’s nothing I’d be concerned about,” said Smylie Kaufman, who was in the final twosome with Spieth at the Masters and has been his friend since they faced each other in junior golf. “He’s been in contention in four of the last six majors. There isn’t a hall of fame golfer who hasn’t had letdowns. It’s kind of ridiculous the media would scrutinize or call it a choke. It happens. It’s golf.”
Kaufman made the comment during an early visit to Oakmont, before Spieth won the Colonial. Turns out, he was right.
“Not every day you’re going to have your best stuff,” Kaufman said. “He didn’t have his best stuff and it was his tournament to win, which is wild to say that without having your best stuff you can be running away with the golf tournament like he was.”
But none of that seemed to matter. It didn’t matter that Spieth showed instant resolve in Amen Corner, bouncing back from the quadruple-bogey 7 at No. 12 with a birdie at No. 13, another at the 15th and very nearly dunking his tee shot at the par-3 16th for an ace that shook every last pine needle at Augusta National. It didn’t matter he had been in the final group on Sunday in three of his previous four starts. Or that he leads the PGA Tour in scoring average (69.719) and total birdies (211) as he heads to Oakmont.
Everyone wanted to know what was wrong with Spieth.
“The reason you play well is you’re willing to let mistakes roll off your back,” Gio Valiante, a sports psychologist who works with a number of PGA Tour players, said on The Golf Channel. “You roll with a bogey and you accept it because you know you’re going to make a lot of birdies.
“Then you get up high in world rankings, and — by the way, this happened to Rory McIlroy and now it’s happening to Jordan Spieth — then you start thinking, ‘The No. 1 player in the world shouldn’t miss a 4-footer, the No. 1 player in the world shouldn’t hit bad shots.’ Then your expectations get unreasonably high, and then instead of accepting a bad shot you start getting cranky and grouchy and all of a sudden what started out as positive momentum switches on you very quickly because you’re trying to be too perfect.”
Actually, the poor tee shot at 12 should not come as a total shock. Spieth hit the exact same short-right clunker last year at Chambers Bay on the 71st hole — the 218-yard 17th — and made double bogey. That came right after his 26-foot birdie putt at No. 16 gave him a three-shot lead. But he still held on to win.
“That was potentially the same kind of experience as the Masters,” Spieth said. “If you’re in it enough, you’re going to be on the good end and bad end of those situations, so keep putting ourselves in contention, and when we’re on the good end again, I’ll be able to enjoy it even more having experienced the other side of it.”
Poise of a champion
Ben Crenshaw, a two-time Masters champion, remembers the first time he met Spieth.
“I tell you, I’ll never forget it — I looked right at him and he looked at me and I thought I was looking at Wyatt Earp,” Crenshaw said. “He just had that look about him.”
Ernie Els, a four-time major champion who won the 1994 U.S. Open at Oakmont, played with Spieth for the first time in 2015 in the Shell Houston Open and was captivated by his behavior. And his talent.
“He’s the nicest kid in the world,” Els said. “What a player. You just cannot see this kid not winning many, many majors.”
Spieth gets another chance at Oakmont, not just to win a major, but to defend the title he won last year and do what he failed to accomplish at the Masters.
“The history of Oakmont produces champions who believe they won at the toughest test in golf, which is a U.S. Open at Oakmont,” Spieth said, standing outside the green-and-white clubhouse after a practice round last month. “If you were to go ask a lot of the game’s greats, you’d probably find most of them would say that’s the toughest test, is the U.S. Open there.
“I already believe that we won golf’s toughest test in winning any U.S. Open. But to win it as what’s regarded as, day to day, the hardest course in the United States, possibly in the world, that would be something you’d look back and say, I conquered golf there. That would be a really cool feeling.”
Does anybody doubt him?
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Before the age of 23: Spieth vs Woods
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