Autistic sister who inspired Spieth to greatness on and off the golf course This bond between athletes and disabled siblings is no fluke
Ellie influences Jordan more than any of his golf coaches
IT all comes down to Ellie. Any conversation about the i ncredibly centred new Masters champion — his calm, his strength, his immense abil it y t o absorb t he pressure of leading a major golf tournament from start to finish — will eventually route back to his 14-yearold sister.
Ellie Spieth does not know that the Masters is more important than any other tournament her brother has played. She does not understand t he concept of professional golf, either.
She knows that Jordan plays a game and the aim is to win. If he wins, it makes him happy — and the family happy. So that makes her happy, too.
And then she might ask if he is bringing her a present home. Not anything as hokey as a green jacket, either, because that really isn’t of any interest.
Ellie has a neurological disorder linked to severe autism. She needs constant care and spent the duration of the Masters staying with family friends, who are also counsellors and teachers at her special needs school.
Yet Spieth acknowledges Ellie as having an influence on his life as great as any golf coach. Anyone spending time around him at Augusta this week says he is different to other 21-year- olds. Ellie is what sets him apart.
Yet, equally, Spieth is not alone in the world of elite sport.
Lewis Hamilton’s half-brother Nicolas has cerebral palsy and is t he fi r st disabled driver to compete in the British Touring Car Championship. The pair of them are very close.
‘It’s quite a cool feeling to watch someone grow up, to see the difficulties and troubles he’s had, the experience he’s had,’ Hamilton says. ‘To go through it with him and see how he pulls out of it, I think he’s just an amazing lad.
‘I love to take my brother down to the track. He likes a challenge but he’s had a l ot steeper challenges, too.’
It is no coincidence, then, this bond between high- achieving athletes and disabled siblings. Hamilton competes in a sport that encapsulates the notion of an international jet set, yet possesses the same sense of grounding that is found in Spieth.
It comes largely from a home environment that reinforces a bigger picture; one that served as a constant reminder of good fortune and inspired both men to make the most of their talents.
Spieth certainly wouldn’t say he is living his life for Ellie — she has her own life, and coping with it is every bit as challenging as keeping a red-hot Phil Mickelson at bay — but he may be driven by the thought that not every human being on the planet is allowed his or her destiny.
It then becomes a duty to take that test on. If Jordan is away at a tournament, each day when they speak, Ellie asks if he has won. Spieth says their conversation often evolves as ‘not yet, not yet, not yet and then, no.’ He was looking forward to telling her yes, at l ast, after Augusta. One imagines she is going to be hearing that word a lot more.
After Alex Bilodeau of Canada won a gold medal at the Sochi Olympic Games in the freestyle skiing moguls, he immediately paid tr i bute to his brother Frederic, who has cerebral palsy.
‘He’s my everyday inspiration,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I wake up in the morning and it’s rainy and I don’t want to train or go out and ski. I look at my brother and, if he had that chance, he would go — he would grab it.
‘With the motivation he has, if he could be a normal person like I have the opportunity to be, he would be three-times Olympic champion. No doubt about it.’
It wasn’t just Spieth’s golf that was phenomenal in Augusta. His manner for such a young player i mpressed everybody. Course management wise beyond his years was matched by a polite, measured presence in his public engagements. His talk of ‘ Mr Crenshaw’, the gentle fun he poked at himself, the way — when asked to describe his final round — he moved i n painstaking detail through every shot, revealing his intentions and emotions as well as the bald technical detail.
Even as Justin Rose and Mickelson closed on that last day, Spieth was unruffled. That nature comes, his f amily explained, f rom leading a domestic life that cannot promote him as the star, no matter his achievements.
His father Shawn took him to one side before he t eed of f on Sunday. ‘ The Masters i s the greatest game,’ he told him. ‘But it is still just a game.’
His mother, Chris, was more specific. ‘Jordan wouldn’t be where he’s at today if he didn’t have Ellie,’ she said. ‘Jordan realises the Masters is not real life. Trying to sit around and have dinner when his sister doesn’t want to eat, when everybody else is eating and has a fit, that’s real life.’ Actually, it’s not, which is what really makes Spieth different. Most families can dine together without such an intense level of i nvolvement a nd interaction each evening, and without mundane events becoming a lesson in perspective and patience. Chris Spieth played basketball for Moravian College and her o t her son, Steven, now starts as a point guard f or Brown. ‘Ellie always thought her brothers won at everything,’ she added, ‘so there was no way they were allowed to be down around her. No way.’
During the Paralympic Games in London in 2012, The Times ran a headline: ‘Suddenly, it’s cool to be disabled’. The writer is tetraplegic and her statement was, in context, well-made. Obviously, nuance is harder to achieve in a staccato banner and, without explanation, it looked a glib statement.
There is nothing cool about being born with the disadvantages Ellie Spieth faces. Could she make a choice, she would be just like her brothers. So this isn’t like that.
The lives of the Spieth family, the Hamiltons and the Bilodeaus haven’t been made better, or cooler, by misfortune.
It i s more that remarkable individuals within those family units have drawn strength from adversity and somehow turned it into a motivational positive.
Jordan Spieth sees that his sister Ellie is never defeated by her disadvantage and he turns that to his advantage. In doing so, he makes her struggle ever nobler; and his achievement. She ain’t heavy. She’s his sister.