SLAMMED SHUT
No Major for Rory this year as door closes on Spieth’s bid to take Tiger’s grand record
NO CAREER Grand Slam for Jordan Spieth and no major for the third successive year for Rory McIlroy. Long before the leaders had finished their third round at the 99th PGA Championship yesterday, the fate of the two pre-tournament favourites was already known.
For Spieth, the dream of the ultimate prize slipped away quietly. Eleven shots off the pace at halfway, the last vestige of hope disappeared amidst a flurry of early bogeys.
He fought back gutsily – doesn’t he always? – and was even two under par for his day’s work until running up an ugly double bogey six at the last to disappear back into the nether ranks.
He was still ahead of Rory at that stage. This week might take some getting over for the Northern Irishman who had placed such store on winning here to rescue his season. Twice a winner in the past over this course, he was miles off the pace as he reached the final four holes. Sadly, this year that had promised so much is looking like a completely lost one.
It’s not been a great year for Tiger Woods either but he can rest easy in the fact he’s still the youngest winner of the career Slam. Given how hard it is to win majors these days, this might be a record he holds on to for the rest of his lifetime.
Spieth gave himself this one-off chance to complete the set of four majors at the tender age of 24 – Tiger did it at the same age but was a few months older - following his remarkable feat of escapology at The Open last month. Now we know even Spieth can only go to the well so often, for there were no such heroics on this occasion.
‘Not to give myself a chance to win is clearly not what I wanted but I’m not going to say I’m disappointed, not after winning The Open so recently,’ he said. ‘I know I will have other chances to win the PGA.’
The Texan had publicly written off his hopes in the near-darkness of Friday night, after falling so far behind the co-leaders, American Kevin Kisner and Ja-pan’s Hideki Matsuyama. If that sounded a touch premature with so much golf still to play, his chances went from slim to none during the course of seven bo-gey-stained holes to begin a cloudy third morning.
Spieth went for the flag at the first from 212 yards, but the ball tumbled into a greenside bunker. From there he splashed out to 8ft and missed the first of three putts inside that distance that would give his early scorecard such an un-tidy look. Another shot drifted away at the par three fourth. ‘Go hard!’ he yelled at an eight iron that never looked like making it over the dangerous bunker that guarded the front of the green. The fatal blow, however, came at the par five 7th, a hole that players look up-on as light relief after what has gone before since it is easily reachable in two blows. By now, however, Spieth was desperate and it showed. Needing an ea-gle three, his hybrid approach squirted off the clubface and finished in a small water hazard fortifying the right side of the green.
Once more, in un-Jordanesque fashion, after dropping under penalty, he needed three more shots to finish the hole for his third bogey. He had fallen to 70th place of the 75 players who made the halfway cut.
With all hope gone, the real Spieth now turned up, as he birdied five of his next ten holes. He deserved better than that sad six at the last for a 71.
McIlroy didn’t get the start he needed either, as problems with his irons con-tinued. After a nicely played opening hole where his birdie putt shaved the hole, McIlroy’s approach to the second didn’t even land on the green, let alone trouble the flagstick. It’s hard to get any momentum when your distance con-trol is that far off, and Rory duly dropped another shot at the fifth. Birdies and bogeys came and went as one step forward kept getting followed by one step back. Four holes from home, he was two over for the day and lieing 49th.
At the top of the leaderboard, two lesser-fancied Americans in Kisner and Chris Stroud were disputing the first four places with three seasoned interna-tionals in Matsuyama, Jason Day and Louis Oosthuizen.
At the halfway stage of the round, it was the impressive plodder Kisner who led on nine under for a one stroke lead over Stroud and Matsuyama, with Day and Oosthuizen four behind. Rickie Fowler was a further shot adrift and then came Britain’s leading hope Paul Casey on three under.