Spieth turns it around at Hilton Head
Ian Poulter and Mark Hubbard set the pace for good scoring through a brief spell of rain in the RBC Heritage at Hilton Head on Thursday. Jordan Spieth was pleasantly surprised to join the chase .
Poulter holed a 30-foot birdie putt on the 17th hole and finished with a fiveiron to four feet for another birdie that capped a 7-under 64, a round without a bogey but not without flaws. Hubbard kept his 64 together with two par putts at the end.
They had a one-shot lead over a group including Viktor Hovland, Sebastian Munoz and Michael Thompson.
Spieth didn’t figure to be part of the conversation until bouncing back from a triple bogey with eight birdies for a 5-under 66. Three holes into the tournament, Spieth stood under a cluster of trees just off the 12th fairway, looking 20 yards to the right at his golf ball nestled in pine straw a few feet beyond the white out-of-bounds stakes. He tried to figure out which tree it hit, not that it mattered. And then he three-putted from 25 feet for a triple bogey.
It was the kind of break Spieth has seen far too often during three years without a victory. “All of a sudden, I’m 3-over through three, and you start to see guys going 2-under through two, 2-under through three early. It’s not a great feeling,” Spieth said.
Spieth told his caddie on the 13th tee: “That’s over. Let’s get four [birdies] today and shoot under par.”
“I ended up getting a few more than that,” Spieth said. He answered with a birdie on No. 13, then, just like last week’s opening round at Colonial, got hot on his back nine. Spieth had a career-best six consecutive birdies. The stretch started with an eight-foot putt on the par-5 second, and it included a seven iron to four feet to a left pin near the water on the par-3 fourth.
Spieth began to contemplate eight straight birdies to end his round. But he saw enough mud on his ball from the fairway on No. 8 that he played conservatively to 30 feet, then finished with another short birdie.
Rory McIlroy was among those who struggled, and only a pair of birdies on the back nine kept it from being worse. He opened with a 72, ending a streak of seven straight tournaments in which he broke par in the opening round.