A late surge leaves Jordan Spieth five shots behind the leaders at the PGA Championship.
Career Grand Slam quest alive after rough start
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — With three holes left, Jordan Spieth was 3 over on his opening round of the PGA Championship and, seemingly as ominous, was coming off two straight bogeys.
“Grind these last few,” Spieth’s caddie, Michael Greller, told him. “Just like Augusta.”
Dallas native Spieth birdied his next two holes and was inches short of birdieing the last. His 1-over 72 on Thursday at Quail Hollow wasn’t the fast start he wanted in pursuit of completing the career Grand Slam, but the late flurry salvaged his day and perhaps his tournament chances. He is five shots behind leaders Thorbjorn Olesen and Kevin Kisner.
After a round in which his three birdie putts totaled 8 feet, 8 inches, Spieth reasoned: “I can’t putt any worse than I did today.”
Similar to Augusta
As Greller reminded, Spieth started similarly in the first round of April’s Masters. After a quadruple bogey on the 15th hole at Augusta, he was 4 over but birdied No. 16 and shot 75, keeping him afloat before he shot 69-68 in the second and third rounds and pulled within two shots of the lead.
Yes, he shot 75 in the final round and tied for 11th, but that Masters showed him the path that he’s now forced to take is not impossible. Obviously he would have preferred to replicate his route three weeks ago at Royal Birkdale, where his first-round 65 jump-started his wire-to-wire British Open victory.
“Historically, I’m pretty solid with the lead, so that was kind of the goal, to grab the lead,” said Spieth, who instead is five shots behind co-leaders Olesen of Denmark and American Kisner. “It’s much easier when you are on the first page of the leaderboard than it is coming from behind.”
In his first major tournament victory, the 2015 Masters, Spieth took the solo first-round lead with a 64. His second major title, in that year’s U.S. Open at Chambers Bay, began with a first-round 68. At Birkdale, his opening 65 enabled him to share the lead with Brooks Koepka and Matt Kuchar.
“Given it’s the first round, I know I’m still in it, but I know that tomorrow’s round becomes that much more important to work my way and stay in it,” Spieth said.
Single digits expected
With 7,600-yard Quail Hollow yielding few low scores, Spieth said that unless someone gets hot like Hideki Matsuyama did at last week’s WGC-Bridgestone, this 99th PGA Championship will play out similarly to this year’s Masters, with a winning score in single digits under par.
“I’ve got to make up ground Friday,” Spieth said, “to really feel like I can play the way this golf course needs to be played and still be able to win.”
On Wednesday, Spieth said the confidence wave he was riding after his Open Championship victory would enable him to freeroll this week, never mind that the golf word is fixated on the 24-year-old Spieth’s chance to supplant 24-year, 6-month-old Tiger Woods as the youngest male player to complete the career Grand Slam.
Spieth was 1 under through his first six holes (10-15) but failed to save par after hitting into bunkers on Nos. 16 and 1.
“I don’t think I was as free-rolling as I thought I would be, as you could tell by some frustration,” Spieth said.
Three-putt bogeys from 52 feet on No. 5 and 85 feet on No. 6 left Spieth in a precarious spot, but he knew two of Quail Hollow’s easier holes, Nos. 7 and 8, presented opportunity.
“If I were to finish par, par, par, I would have thrown myself out of the tournament,” Spieth said. “If I was focused on my score, it might have been a different story. Michael said, ‘Let’s get three good looks and see what happens.’”
After a long wait on the par-5 seventh tee box, Spieth grooved another drive — he hit 10 of 14 fairways Thursday — and hit a hybrid from 254 yards to 31 feet, setting up a two-putt birdie.
On the 349-yard eighth, his lob wedge approach from 57 yards stuck 2 feet from the cup. Koepka, with a 3-under round, easily won the matchup of major winners (Sergio Garcia shot 4 over), but he came away impressed with Spieth’s grit.
“He’s a grinder,” Koepka said. “It’s impressive to watch him play. He picks apart a golf course really, really well. He’s what, 24? At that age, that’s a lot of maturity. It’s fun to see.”