Spieth has ace up his sleeve for US Open
tacoma — World No. 1 Rory McIlroy will be chasing his second US Open title in five years next week, but standing in his way is Masters champ Jordan Spieth, who believes he has an edge over his rivals. The 115th US Open begins Thursday at the links-style Chambers Bay Golf Club which is hosting its first major championship so few of the players can say they have spent considerable time on the course.
And that goes for world number two Spieth, who claimed the first Grand Slam of the season when he won The Masters in April. While Chambers Bay will be a mystery to all but a handful of the players, Spieth does have an ace up his sleeve — his caddie, Michael Greller, worked at Chambers Bay before carrying Spieth’s bag on the PGA Tour.
“Michael told me some shots that I needed to get ready for Chambers,” said Spieth, who played the course once before at the US Amateur in 2012. “He walked it a couple of times a few weeks ago. “I need a shot I can trust from the runoff areas. The greens are massive, so controlling your speed on these longer putts, you are not going to be able to feed it into a lot of these pins.”
Spieth, 21, has played 16 PGA Tour events this season and along with his two victories he has three runner-ups and nine top ten finishes. “It is going to be a lot of speed control,” he said of Chambers Bay. “It is going to be different short game shots, almost like you are playing an Open Championship.”
That might be music to the ears of McIlroy as he is the reigning British Open champion and is coming off a victory at the Wells Fargo event in his last US outing in May.