USA TODAY International Edition
Confident Spieth regains stroke
Win at Pebble Beach sign of things to come
LOS ANGELES Jordan Spieth’s victory in the AT& T Pebble Beach Pro- Am last weekend signaled he might have regained the confidence he showed when he won back- to- back majors in 2015. Spieth also saw a subtler, encouraging sign here at Riviera Country Club when he was working on his putting Monday in advance of the Genesis Open with his coach, Cameron McCormick.
“Cameron was kind of getting frustrated with the practice green,” Spieth said. “The ball was kind of going off right, going off left when my stroke was fine. “I’m normally the one getting frustrated, and he has to calm me down. I just feel loose, feel free flowing.”
This is good news for Spieth, 23, and potentially bad news for the rest of the PGA Tour field.
In 2015, Spieth won the Masters and U. S. Open, then finished tied for fourth in the British Open and second in the PGA Championship. But in 2016, despite a second- place finish in the Masters and two tournament victories, Spieth lost his dominance. That might be changing. “I feel as confident in my game now as I felt going back to ( 2015),” he said Tuesday.
And how has he regained that confidence and the form that propelled him to a four- stroke victory at Pebble Beach on Sunday and his first win of the year?
“Just figuring out what parts of the game needed work, how we needed to work them,” Spieth said. “Then it all comes from putting in the work but then also seeing that, seeing the execution in action in a Tour event and then seeing a result. So it’s all that combination.
“But it starts with dissecting what needs to be worked on, putting in that work and then trusting it on Tour and then from there after you trust it, then mentally closing it out. It’s kind of a three-, four- step process in a way. And then you’ve got to continue to do it to maintain it.”
Toward that end, Spieth indicated, he’s done a couple of things, including more closely studying the statistical breakdown of his game.
“I’ve looked more at the stats throughout tournaments, kind of in the middle of the tournaments, than I have in the past,” he said. “Just trying to dissect exactly what’s going on and where to maybe spend a little extra time.”
After his Pebble Beach victory, Spieth said he got a flurry of text messages, including two from athletes who know how to sustain success, Tom Brady and Stephen Curry, both of whom also are sponsored by Under Armour.
“It’s kind of cool that these other athletes that are going through ups and downs and recognizing kind of knowing what’s going on in the head on a day like Sunday and trying to protect the lead and how that can be a different challenge than starting tied for the lead and winning the tournament,” Spieth said. “So it was more specific messages to that, which is pretty cool to experience.”