It is not inconceivable to think Jordan Spieth could have won the past five majors. At the very least, it appeared he would win three of them. That is, until he blew his five-shot lead in April on the back nine at the Masters.
Spieth won two majors in 2015 — the Masters and U.S. Open — missed a playoff by a single shot at the British Open and finished second at the PGA Championship. It was one of the greatest runs in major championships since Tiger Woods won four in a row — the so-called Tiger Slam — from 2000 to 2001.
That streak was never in jeopardy of being extended at Oakmont Country Club.
Spieth shot a final-round 75 and was never a factor in the final round of the U.S. Open, which isn’t much different than his previous three rounds. He finished at 9-over 289, his worst showing in a major since he missed the cut in the 2014 PGA Championship.
In the end, Spieth was done in by the shortest holes at Oakmont Country Club — Nos. 2, 11 and 14 — which he played in 6-over par in four days. But the official end in his attempt to become the first player in 27 years to repeat as U.S. Open champion came at the par-3 sixth when he four-putted from 20 feet.
“The funny thing is, I felt like I didn’t have my game this week,” Spieth said when it was all over Sunday. “If I play the easy holes at even par, I’m still top five. That’s what’s tough to swallow leaving this week is, you do all this work on this course, and it was the easy little iron-wedge holes that tore me apart. But I think that’s just kind of bad timing on them.”
Spieth has maintained since April that his triple-bogey-7 on the 12th hole at Augusta National, in which he hit two balls in Rae’s Creek, also was the result of bad timing. That is, the wrong time to have the miss that had been troubling him — short right — occur on No. 12, and not, say, No. 10 or 11.
But what was bad timing was Spieth four-putting from 20 feet at No. 6 after his tee shot landed in the left greenside bunker. That was the end of any chance he had to mount what he hoped would be a Johnny Miller-like charge on the final day.
The previous time Spieth four-putted in a major, he missed a playoff by one shot in the 2015 British Open. This was different.
“The pin is actually located on a pretty tough little spot, where, you know, if you hit your first putt too hard, then you’re left with a little bit of trouble,” Spieth said. “So I just got into some putting trouble today and couldn’t quite get it going on the front nine.
“At that point, the tournament is over. You just try and fight back to even par, which is tough to do. Started to do it, and then the story of my week is just playing the easy holes poorly. You know, 11, 14, and 2, to play it whatever I played them, 7 or 8 over, on those holes the leaders are playing them under par.”
It was 6 over. At No. 2, which is 340 yards from the very back teeing space, Spieth had a birdie, bogey and double bogey. At the 11th, which is 379 yards uphill, he had two bogeys and a birdie. And he bogeyed the 358-yard 14th each of the past three days.
In many instances, he was betrayed by the club he relies on the most — his wedge. He will need to correct that if he wants to start another streak.
“I’ll just go home and then I’ll look forward to the World Golf Championship in Akron [Ohio] to try to gain some momentum for the next couple of majors,” Spieth said.
Gerry Dulac: gdulac@post-gazette.com and Twitter @gerrydulac.
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