Spieth keeps comeback for the ages in play
Leaderboard’s packed with marquee names heading into final round at Augusta — but one stands out
To give you an idea of Jordan Spieth’s towering reputation for rare expertise around Augusta National Golf Club, consider the betting odds at the 81st Masters.
It was mid-afternoon Saturday, around the time Spieth was making the turn in the tournament’s third round, that many online sports books began listing Spieth as the favourite to win 2017’s first golfing major. It didn’t seem to matter to the bookies that Rickie Fowler had begun the day as the favourite, thanks to Fowler’s place in a four-way tie for the lead as play began. It didn’t seem to matter that Spieth had begun the day four shots off the pace.
Heck, when the real-time odds at various gambling sites started listing Spieth as the favourite to win the green jacket, Spieth was about to play the ninth hole and still sitting four shots back of leader Charley Hoffman. But that didn’t matter, either.
What mattered was as plain as the eye could see.
On a fair-weather Saturday, Spieth had arrived on the verdant property with his iron game sharpened and his putter in a groove. And with those weapons working — well, really, who’s going to bet against Jordan Alexander Spieth on a course he treats like a personal home field?
As it is, Spieth will begin what promises to be an electric final round two strokes behind co-leaders Justin Rose and Sergio Garcia, who sit at six under par. And, amid a leaderboard packed with marquee names, Fowler will stand a shot off the lead at minus-five.
But count yourself as a bold prognosticator if you survey the situation and go against the 23-year-old Spieth. This is the fourth time he’s been here. This is the fourth time he’ll be in contention on Sunday. Tiger Woods didn’t achieve that feat in his first quadrennial here. Neither did Jack Nicklaus. Spieth, on the other hand, has played the Masters three times previously and only been beaten by two men — Danny Willett last year and Bubba Watson in 2014. In between those secondplace finishes, he went wire to wire to win the tournament by four shots with a record-tying score of 18 under par in 2015.
“Yeah, Jordan obviously has a special relationship with the Masters,” said Rose. “He’s going to feel great about his chances.”
Which is not to say there won’t be worthy competitors vying for the green jacket. Rose, the world No. 14 who shot a 67 Saturday, has already won a major at the U.S. Open in 2013, and he played in the final group with Spieth in 2015, finishing tied for second.
Garcia, the world No. 11, is famously major-less but so far performing on the putting green with game-changing confidence at age 37; the fact he didn’t shoot himself out of the picture on Saturday, as he did back in 2012, speaks to impressive progress. Fowler, though he’s also without a major, is the eighth-ranked player on the planet for a reason. And Masters winners Adam Scott and Charl Schwartzel are also in fine position, three shots and two shots off the lead, respectively.
So maybe the field makes for a compelling choice. Spieth winning here would in some ways be too improbable, for a long list of reasons. He was 10 strokes off the lead after the first round, for starters, when he shot 75 and Hoffman (who also sits at four under par heading into Sunday) reeled off an outlier of a 65 on a blustery day. The only man to win a major trailing by 10 or more shots after the opening round, according to research by the Golf Channel, was Harry Vardon. Vardon won the Open championship way back in 1898. Nobody has come back to win a Masters from a first-round deficit bigger than seven shots. Nick Faldo and Tiger Woods managed that trick in 1990 and 2005, respectively.
So even though Spieth spoke about drawing inspiration from a personal history that has included a win at the 2013 John Deere Classic after a six-stroke first-round deficit — and even though he cited New England’s Super Bowl win as a recent bit of never-say-die fuel from the wider sports world — winning Sunday would amount to a comeback for the ages.
“I mean, after the first round, I couldn’t ask for much better than this,” Spieth said. “So new experience for me, coming from behind on Sunday at the Masters, which is kind of fun to say . . . I plan to play aggressive because at this point, it’s win or go home … Finishing fifth versus 10th doesn’t mean much to me, so that frees me up a bit (Sunday).”
Maybe there are factors that will hold him back, too. Maybe the memory of his epic collapse from a year ago, when a Sunday seven on the par-three 12th hole sunk his hopes at back-to-back wins, will lurk too menacingly (although so far Spieth has parred that allegedly cursed hole in all three rounds). And maybe the quadruple-bogey nine he took on the par-five 15th hole on Thursday will prove to be insurmountable. Nobody has won a Masters with a quadruple-bogey on a scorecard, after all. So again — what are the chances Spieth takes another historical truth about this tradition-laden place and renders it obsolete?
Still, as Rose said, Spieth has a special relationship with Augusta. He’s also playing with a devil-maycare abandon of the chaser. On the par-five 13th on Saturday, he weighed the merits of laying up before saying to caddie Michael Greller, “What would Arnie do?”
What he did, in the aggressive spirit of four-time Masters winner Arnold Palmer, was go for the green and make a birdie.
“You’ve got to play like Arnold Palmer out here,” he told the CBS broadcast.
Last year he wasn’t playing like himself — he was striking the ball inconsistently — and he still nearly won. This year he’s hitting it far more sharply and surging. On Saturday he led the field in approach-shot proximity to the hole, tucking his typical iron to about 27 feet. And it doesn’t hurt that he’s also leading the tournament in scrambling, making good on 12 of 14 up-anddowns. Putting, though Spieth has carved out a reputation as a genius on these greens, hasn’t been a point of domination. Fowler has been the best performer with the short stick so far, gaining an average of 3.8 strokes a round on the field. Spieth ranks 21st in that stat.
But if you had to ask a golfer to make a putt to save your life — well, Spieth would be a popular choice. Who’d be surprised if he made a putt to cap the comeback of the century in Sunday’s setting sun?
“Waking up and you have a chance to win your favorite tournament, that you’ve dreamt of winning and competing in since you were a kid, and to be able to have your fourth opportunity now . . . I didn’t know going into my first one if I would have five chances in my life. So it’s awesome,” Spieth said. “And at the same time, I’ve been on both sides of it now, and I like the winning side better. So I’m certainly going to go for broke (Sunday).”