Playoff heroics don’t surprise foes, caddie
CROMWELL, Conn. — Daniel Berger and Michael Greller had far different points of view on Jordan Spieth’s playoff-winning 61foot bunker shot yesterday to win the Travelers Championship, but they had the same reaction to it. Acceptance. Acceptance not only of the shot itself but of the fact it wasn’t quite as unbelievable as it seemed because of the man who launched it and then seemingly willed it to bounce right when it had no reason to do so except that it’s what Spieth needed it to do.
“Jordan does Jordan things, you know,” said Berger, after Spieth’s perfect sand shot beat him on the first playoff hole at TPC River Highlands.
Berger had charged from 5 back early in the round to tie Spieth at 12-under with a cold-blooded birdie of his own on 17.
“Jordan doing Jordan things,” said Greller, Spieth’s caddie and on-course psychologist, who reminded him just before he stepped into that bunker in front of the 18th green that “magic happens here.”
That is the Travelers’ history since the tournament moved here in 1991, but no finish was more magical than Spieth holing out from that bunker to win after having bounced his tee shot off a tree and back into the fairway but 227 yards from the hole. His second shot then hit the side of a hill some 20 yards short of the green and bounced back into the same bunker he’d nearly holed out from minutes earlier on 18.
Considering how Spieth had been putting all day, it was probably a safer haven than the green but no one would have imagined he would win a tournament he’d led wire to wire from that spot. Frankly, not even Spieth, the author of so many “Jordan doing Jordan thing” moments that it is now apparently a PGA Tour refrain from caddie to vanquished foe.
“I felt more comfortable in the bunker than I did from 4 feet,” said Spieth, who had missed two critical putts from that distance on the backside to put himself in the vice he found himself in at the end of the day. “I was in there in regulation. I knew it was the place to be. So on my approach shot I thought if it was not going to carry, that bunker’s not bad. From 227 into that hole I was happy with where it was. I was just trying to get it up there around the hole.
“For it to actually kind of spin in, I went and jumped up and saw it kind of spinning towards the middle of the hole and I’m like, ‘ No way!’ It hit, bounced right, went in and I lost my mind.”
So did Greller, who launched the bunker rake into the air at the same moment Spieth flung his lob wedge wildly to the side and then ran up to his caddie and they launched into a low-rise chest bump.
As they reacted like the Fun Bunch in the end zone, Berger gave Spieth a thumbs up, a look of stoic resignation on his face. He then gave his long-time rival dating back to junior golf days a low five before walking back to stand over about a 60-foot putt he knew damn well he wasn’t going to make to force a second playoff hole.
Berger may have already recorded one win and four top-three finishes this season, and be considered one of the Tour’s young guns but no one has yet said, “Daniel does Daniel things.” That is reserved for the 23-year-old Spieth, who joined Tiger Woods as the only golfers in PGA history to have won 10 times on Tour before the age of 24.
This victory came the hard way and not simply because he holed out from that bunker to win. In fact, that