Spieth makes spirited run at green jacket, finishes third
AUGUSTA, Ga. – Jordan Spieth, the young master of the Masters, lived the day of his dreams Sunday. For 16 holes, he was painting a sports masterpiece, playing a flawless round of golf with a stunning nine birdies, on pace for the greatest final round in Masters history. No one had ever shot a 63 on Sunday at the Masters. All he needed was two more pars and history would be his.
“I look back, and, man, I did everything right,” Spieth would later say.
Nine strokes behind leader Patrick Reed when he began the day, Spieth was now tied with him for the lead. All he needed was two more pars, and history would be his. Would a Masters victory come with it?
Not quite. Augusta National giveth, but Augusta National also taketh away. An 18-foot birdie putt on No. 17 that would have taken Spieth to 10-under par for the day, and 15-under for the tournament, keeping pace with eventual winner Reed, just slipped by, then Spieth made his biggest — and only — mistake of the round, clipping a tree limb with his tee shot on No. 18.
After so much good luck, here came the bad. His drive dropped right there, just 177 yards from the tee, making the difficult finishing hole even harder. Yet Spieth still managed to set himself up with an 8-foot par putt, but that, too, slid by the hole. He cringed. It was his first bogey of the day. His fabulous attempt had come to an end. He finished with a 64, still an excellent round, good for third place overall but stopping his historic march in its tracks.
Oh, but what a march it was.
“Are you kidding me?” Spieth exclaimed to his caddie, Michael Greller, after a 33-foot birdie putt — the ninth and what would be his last of the day — fell off the face of the earth and into the 16th hole Sunday afternoon.
Are you kidding me, indeed? Incredulity was the order of the day. Get this: Spieth’s plan coming into the fi- nal round miles behind Reed and Co. was to not look at any of the leaderboards on the course, which isn’t an easy thing to do. But he did it. Everyone on earth watching the Masters knew where Spieth stood. Everyone but Spieth.
“Honest to God, I didn’t look once today,” he said. “I’m nine back. Go out and just have fun, don’t worry about the golf tournament itself, worry about playing Augusta National. I heard roars. I knew somebody was playing well.” Surprise. It was he.
“With eight people ahead of me starting the day,” Spieth continued, “to get that much help and shoot a fantastic round was nearly impossible. But I almost pulled off the impossible. I had no idea. When I finished on 18 and (finally) looked at the board, I could have been in the lead by two and I could have been down four — and neither one would have surprised me.”
It was a day any golfer would have craved, most particularly a golfer named Rory McIlroy. While the match-play-style final pairing of Reed and McIlroy fizzled with the Northern Irishman’s surprisingly uneven play, it turned out Reed’s prime rival for the title for much of the afternoon came from four groups ahead.
Teeing off 40 minutes before the leader, Spieth, 24 going on about 40, it seems, birdied the first hole, the second, the fifth, the eighth and the ninth. All of a sudden, he had leapt into third place. With a birdie on the par-3 12th, his old nemesis, he passed McIlroy and moved into second. He birdied 13 and 15, both par-5s. And then, after the birdie on 16, he caught Reed and was tied for first.
All the past drama at No. 12 allowed Spieth a moment of comic relief in the midst of his round. When his tee shot safely flew over Rae’s Creek and just off the back of the green, he raised his arms in triumph with a big smile, mocking his previous travails.
Is Spieth made for the Masters? You decide. He tied for second as a 20-yearold in 2014. He led start to finish to win his first major in 2015. He led for the first three rounds in 2016, seemingly cruising to a second consecutive Masters title, when he knocked two balls into the creek in the final round in 2016, taking a quadruple-bogey 7 and finishing tied for second once again. Last year was uncharacteristic, a tie for 11th. And now, this.
“Probably the most pressure-packed shot I’ve ever hit, with my history there,” Spieth said of No. 12. “To knock that putt in was massive for me going forward.”
But it was more than that. It was a big part of the story of his superlative day.
“In general, this round was fantastic,” he said. “I mean, nobody’s going to have a great Sunday every year at Augusta National. To be able to have a chance to win this tournament five years in a row is really, really cool.”
And, as it turns out, no surprise at all.