Spieth’s season is not beyond saving
JORDAN Spieth is the defending FedEx Cup champion, though it doesn’t feel like it. Spieth, once was the next best thing in golf, is trying to do something at the end of this summer that will erase everyone’s memory of what happened at the start of it.
For no matter how much Spieth tries to convince us he has moved past the quadruple-bogey 7 at the 12th hole in the final round of the Masters, the rest of the world won’t until he wins another major, or something similar like the FedEx Cup.
Spieth calls his second-place finish at the Masters a “close call.” But when you take a five-stroke lead to the back nine on a Masters Sunday and don’t come away with a green jacket, there’s no way to spin that into a positive.
Nevertheless, he has two wins this season — at the Hyundai Tournament of Champions and at Colonial — and along with winning the Masters and the U.S. Open in 2015, the 23-year-old already has had more of a career than 95 percent of those who ever played on Tour.
But two balls into Rae’s Creek last April and no follow-up majors have made this seem like a ho-hum year for Spieth. A successful defense of the FedEx Cup could improve things immeasurably, though the way he finished his first round of the Barclays on Thursday at Bethpage Black was a reminder of why things haven’t gone exceedingly well in 2016.
He was 2-under par and within three shots of the lead heading to the par-4 16th hole. But he would bogey the 16th and the 18th after errant tee shots to end the day at even par, five shots off the lead.
“It was just a real bummer f inish because I actually felt like I really actually played pretty solid today,” Spieth said. “I struck the ball nicely. I just didn’t find the fairway [on] those into-the-wind holes.”
There is plenty of golf left to catch leaders Patrick Reed and Martin Laird. Three solid rounds over the Black and he can make what happened at Augusta a mole hill instead of the mountain it has become.
“I like this golf course and the way it’s playing, and I showed that today,” Spieth said after his first competitive round on the Black. “Very rarely do I get to a point in the round where I finish worse than I was. I dropped three shots from where I was at one point today.”
We could bring up the Masters, but no need to be cruel.
We’ve waited for Spieth to be the player he was in 2015, and maybe that’s unfair. He could do little wrong last year. He missed the cut at the first two events of the FedEx Cup — the Barclays and Deutsche Bank Championship, but finished tied for 13th at the BMW Championship then won the Tour Championship to earn the $10 million prize.
That check and an additional $12 million in prize money made it special year for Spieth. Now anything less encourages scrutiny, even when you’ve won twice in a year.
“I’m very pleased with the way the season’s gone,” Spieth insisted. “I’m setting some pretty lolofty goals for myself for the next six weeks.”
First things first. He has got to get through the next three days at the Black — which, by the time Sunday arrives, could be more brutal than it was during two U.S. Opens in 2002 and 2009. Spieth played in an afternoon grouping that endured wind gusts up to 25 mph. Figure the winning score to be closer to the 3-under Tiger Woods fashioned to win the 2002 U.S. Open.
“I’ve got an uphill battle now,” Spieth said. “But on the golf course, you can make up a lot of ground with a good score.”
One or two wins in the FedEx Cup, then a heroic showing in the Ryder Cup next month still could make this another memorable year for Spieth.