There was a time when Jordan Spieth’s golf game seemed touched by magic.
He was King Arthur in soft spikes, each club like Excalibur in his hands.
A son of Texas, Spieth had already constructed his own legend before his 25th birthday and he did it with a filmmaker’s imagination, an artist’s brushstrokes and a romantic’s passion. Spieth didn’t just win three major championships in short order, he did it willfully, emotionally and, to a degree, arrogantly.
Spieth was that good.
But it will be eight years this July since Spieth won his last major, pointing and telling caddie Michael Greller to “go get that” when an eagle putt tumbled into the hole on his way to winning the 2017 Open Championship at Royal Birkdale.
Holding the Claret Jug that day, Spieth was a PGA Championship win away from completing the career Grand Slam, an achievement accomplished by only six players, most recently Rory McIlroy in April.
When Spieth tees it up at Quail Hollow Club this week, he will try for the ninth time to complete the career slam by winning the PGA Championship, the one major title that has so far eluded him. He will try this time with a surgically repaired wrist, a wife and two small children with a third on the way and the understanding that he’s somewhere between the start and the end of his playing career.
Call it what you will – stubborn, bullish, optimistic – Spieth tried for years to play around the pain and weakness in his left wrist while quietly wondering what to do next.
Spieth still fiercely believes he can play the way he once did but is realistic enough to understand the special thing he had. No one should throw him a pity party.
“I’ve lived that way before and it doesn’t help,” Spieth said.
The left wrist injury that led Spieth to finally have surgery last summer didn’t just happen. There was the moment in May 2023 when Spieth felt a pop when he was getting out of a swimming pool with his son, Sammy, but the issue was years in the making, dating back to late 2017 or early 2018.
Here’s how serious it was:
Spieth found himself in the final Saturday pairing of the 2019 PGA Championship at Bethpage Black with eventual champion Brooks Koepka and he was afraid of what might happen.
“I was about to go out there and I know I will be exposed. It’s not a mental thing. I am legitimately getting away with murder and now I’m in the final group and the expectation is that you’re going … this is cool but it kinda stinks,” said Spieth, who shot 72 that Saturday and eventually finished T3, his only top-10 finish in the PGA Championship since it became the one that’s missing.
Spieth was insistent he could make the necessary adjustments to remain the player he was but they came with a cost. There were times working with his longtime swing coach Cameron McCormick when he couldn’t make a pain-free swing without significantly weakening his grip.
“I just said, ‘Cam, I can’t. It hurts too much. I can’t hold it like that.’ And instead of getting it fixed, I just played with that grip,” Spieth said.
Because he was blessed with great hands, Spieth held his game together but he was surviving rather than thriving. That’s OK for some players who are just trying to make a living. For Spieth, it was like being in purgatory.
In technical terms, Spieth’s clubface was eight degrees open at the top compared to where it had been. He made compensations that created bad habits. The hole was getting deeper.
Spieth committed to swing changes in early 2021 and they helped. He went into the 2021 PGA Championship at Kiawah Island and 2022 PGA at Southern Hills feeling good about his chances but finished outside the top 25 in both.
He was chasing something that once came naturally.
“I bounce around back a little bit, like what if I had just got on top of it back then. What could have happened? Really, in ’19 and ’20, I was living in the past every day,” Spieth said.
That’s not how a twentysomething should live.
“It’s not really healthy,” Spieth said.
When McIlroy won the Masters in April, it ended the long-running narrative that had draped itself around his career, the when and if questions about winning a green jacket and, as a byproduct, completing the career Grand Slam.
Because McIlroy remained at or near the top of the game for the decade-plus he chased a Masters victory, because of his magnetism and because the golf calendar points to April in Augusta once the new year begins, it was golf’s version of the Odyssey.
Now it’s Spieth’s turn to try to add his name to golf’s most exclusive list – Gene Sarazen, Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Tiger Woods and McIlroy.
“As much as you try to get yourself in the right frame of mind to just try to win the golf tournament and then let everything else happen, it’s in there. Consciously or subconsciously, you feel that,” McIlroy said of chasing the slam.
“You know that you’re not just trying to win another tournament, you’re trying to become part of history, and that has a certain weight to it. I’ve certainly felt that at Augusta over the years. I’m sure Jordan has felt that a bit going into each PGA that he’s had a chance to do the same thing.”
The objective is the same but the dynamic feels different.
“I think it’s a different animal. I’m not him. The way he talked about it, the way he’s always talked about it, it would be a different animal,” Spieth said.
“For me, it would be the same result. You get the same accomplishment but him at Augusta … I think I’d have more noise at Augusta than I would at the PGA on a Sunday. Just to win another one there where I let a couple go."
“It’s not like a proving-anything-to-anyone situation. I don’t feel that way at all. You can argue that would be an easy thing for a source of inspiration, proving I am this player versus this player. I don’t feel that way.”
Jordan Spieth
Spieth is one of the 11 players to have won three legs of the career slam. Phil Mickelson will get another shot at the U.S. Open next month at Oakmont, an event in which he has finished second a remarkable six times. He’ll turn 55 the day after the U.S. Open ends.
Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson never won the PGA Championship. Sam Snead never won the U.S. Open. Byron Nelson never won the Open Championship. Lee Trevino never won the Masters.
Scottie Scheffler has won two majors but he needs three more for the career slam because he won the Masters twice.
“Jordan can win the Grand Slam by winning four majors. Rory did it in five. To do it in five is pretty wild,” Scheffler said.
“I’ve only one won, technically. That’s the other side of the coin.
“It’s not easy to get on the cusp but it’s a lot easier to get on the cusp than to actually pull it off.”
Spieth will turn 32 in July and with 13 PGA Tour wins, including three majors, he seems destined for the Hall of Fame. In the nearly eight years since his Open Championship victory, Spieth has won just twice, the most recent coming three years ago at the RBC Heritage.
A decade ago, Spieth was taking spring break trips with his buddies Justin Thomas, Rickie Fowler and Smylie Kaufman. Now they’re all married, most of them have children and priorities shift.
“Life doesn’t get in the way, but it changes,” ESPN analyst Curtis Strange, a two-time major champion, said.
When Spieth made his post-surgery debut at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in February, he talked about entering a 10-year window in his career, stressing the need for patience as he builds his way back.
There have been moments – the final-round 62 at the CJ Cup Byron Nelson where he finished fourth may have been the best yet – that reaffirm Spieth’s self belief. The more patient he is, Spieth said, the better he tends to play and he arrived at the Truist Championship last week with four straight top-20 finishes.
“You want to be as present as possible, and in my situation it’s a really hard thing to do. Because I’m trying to live a little bit in the past, but I’m also trying to satisfy the future for the past, for whatever length of time I have left playing at a high level. That’s the most difficult thing,” Spieth said.
Past, present, future.
Jordan Spieth can still have it all.
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Top: It's been eight years since Jordan Spieth won a major championship.
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