Some of the best shots made by the major champs

Jordan Spieth won the British Open with a flourish at the end. Justin Thomas hit 7-iron that had to be perfect for him to seal his first major at the PGA Championship.

Both wonder if they would have been in position to win on Sunday if not for key shots earlier in the week.

It’s like that just about every year. There is a signature shot from a major, the one that gets replayed more than the others. And there is another shot — or one moment, as was the case for Masters champion Sergio Garcia — that is just as meaningful to them. Garcia hit 8-iron that nicked the pin and set up a 15-foot eagle putt to tie Justin Rose for the lead.

“One of the best shots I hit all week,” Garcia said.

Just as meaningful to him was the 15th club in his bag — the space between his ears.

Garcia had every reason to believe this major would turn out like so many others when he began the back nine with two bogeys to fall two shots behind, and then watched his tee shot on the 13th bounce off a tree into the hazard.

“Funny enough, most other weeks I would have been thinking, ‘Here we go. What’s going on?’” Garcia said.

Instead, he was determined to make par. After a drop, he hit a baby hook with the 9-iron down the fairway and was in position from 89 yards to save par.

“The most important thing was that I felt calm throughout the whole thing,” he said. “That calmness gave me confidence. I was like, ‘It’s OK. You’re doing everything right. You’re playing great. It’s your time.”

And it was. watching on television or anyone else.

“I knew it was going to bend a little bit to the right as it went down off the slope to the bunker,” he said. “And then when it gets to the valley, the hole is on a 3-degree slope going the other way, into and off the right. So it’s going to be a downhill left-to-right, and then it double breaks into uphill right-to-left.” Got that? “Go get that,” he told caddie Michael Greller after making the putt.

“I like those putts,” he said. “They become total feel. That’s what I needed at that point in time, to get the technicality out of it.”

The finish is famous. Overlooked was a shot in the second round that Spieth felt kept him from a mini-meltdown. Right when the rain started pounding, Spieth drove into a pot bunker on No. 10, punched out and then hit his third shot long and to the right. Facing bogey or worse, he chipped in for par.