Spieth gets a quadruple bogey
His quadruple bogey leads to unseemly 9
“I certainly can post single digits under par at this point. I’ve got three rounds to go.” Jordan Spieth, after shooting 75 in the first round
AUGUSTA, G A. Three days and a few hours short of a full year later, Jordan Spieth returned to the scene of his 2016 Masters demise, the 12th tee at Augusta National.
Winds swirled. Spectators packed 20 deep in the gallery cheered.
“Jordan!” came a throaty yell. “Let’s go, Jordan!”
The roar from those gathered at Amen Corner was as loud as it had been on the first tee. These fans knew what was up.
Spieth did, too. If he wasn’t already contemplating, even fearing, this shot — the very same shot that led to the devastating quadruple bogey last year that cost him a chance to win back-toback Masters — he was now.
“Certainly, I always have nerves walking to that tee, I always have,” Spieth said later. “It was tough today because you don’t know exactly what the wind is going to do to the ball.”
But Spieth knew what he had to do. He needed to hit the ball long and hard, high over Rae’s Creek, where his Masters dream went to die last year.
“I ripped one,” he said. “I was very surprised at how far it flew and how little the wind affected it.”
He also found a little humor in the way the crowd reacted.
“I was a bit surprised at how loud the cheer was when my ball landed about 35 feet away from the hole,” he said with a smile. “I was relieved to see it down and on the green. And I guess everybody else felt maybe more than I did on it. But it was nice to make a 3 there.”
After easily making par, 23year-old Spieth stood at even par for the round. He birdied the next hole, the par-5 13th. “I really thought we had it going there,” he said. Then he bogeyed 14.
But that was nothing compared to 15. Facing exactly 100 yards for his approach to the familiar par-5, he landed his wedge short of his target, and the backspin took it from there — off the green, down the slope and into the water.
After the penalty stroke, he overdid his fifth shot and flew the green, leaving a difficult chip that rolled all the way back to the front of the green. He then needed three putts for an ugly quadru- ple-bogey 9.
“Very difficult,” Spieth said. “You think of it as a birdie hole, obviously being a par 5. And unfortunately I still thought of it as a birdie hole today and it really isn’t when you lay up. So I didn’t take my medicine. … Instead I was stuck in the 15-is-a-birdie-hole mentality, and it kind of bit me a little bit. I struck the shot well, I just hit the wrong club. I used a club that would spin instead of one that would maybe take the spin off.”
Standing behind the green on his sixth shot, there was one thought running through his head. “I obviously wasn’t going to hit it in the water again,” he said. He didn’t, but he was still at it until he had carded the messy 9.
So it was a quadruple bogey to finish the 2016 Masters and a quadruple bogey to start the 2017 tournament. This is not a trend Spieth wants to continue.
Just as the wind confounded the golfers all day, so too did the ebb and flow of his round. A wellstruck 7-iron led to a birdie on the par-3 16th, followed by two strong pars, and Spieth finished Thursday’s first round at 3-over 75.
“I’m going to probably need to play something under par tomorrow (Friday), which puts a little bit extra pressure that I wouldn’t have put on tomorrow, because I was thinking even par for the two days was a good score. And obviously now 3 over, I feel like I need to snag something tomorrow.”
Spieth was nothing if not optimistic about the rest of the tournament.
“It looks something like single digits (under par) might win this,” he said. “And I certainly can post single digits under par at this point. I’ve got three rounds to go.”
As long as he avoids the quadruple bogeys.