Spieth shows his special quality
Jordan Spieth turns 22 next week. He’s only getting started at the task of making every other golfer look like old news.
That’s a bold statement on the day after the Texan came up short of a British Open playoffff eventually won by Zach Johnson, but who is in the mood to argue it?
All Spieth did was go 14-under-par at St. Andrews, a place as mysterious and legendary as any ancient knight’s tale.
A player’s fifirst visit there is supposed to approximate the
Dave George
comfort level of a child’s fifirst attempt at swimming, a sputtering struggle to reach the other side without panicking while every skill thought previously mastered is being put to an entirely new kind of test.
Jack Nicklaus, for instance, is remembered for a runner-up fifinish in his fifirst British Open at St. Andrews back in 1962, but the details that slip away are the 76 he shot in the fifirst round and the 74 he shot in the second. A redhot weekend fifinish shot Jack up the leaderboard but left him fifive strokes short of Tony Lema.
Tiger Woods’ fifirst try at St. Andrews in 1995 featured a 74 to open and a 78 in the fifinal round. As a 19-year-old
amateur, he did very well to make the cut but never was close to contention. It wasn’t until his next visit to St. Andrews, in 2000, that he ruled the Old Course and the world in the midst of a Tiger Slam of four consecutive major titles spread over two seasons.
That’s one way, then, to measure the confident glide that Spieth is on right now. Any course is as good as the next to him, from Augusta National to St. Andrews to the John Deere Classic. He figures to make a ton of birdies every time out and he figures to win. Period.
Now we come to the bigger, more historic headline to write over Spieth’s tie for fourth place on Monday.
He had a sure-fire shot at winning the first three legs of golf ’s Grand Slam — the Masters, the U.S. Open and the British Open — and he put on a show as mesmerizing as anyone ever has in chasing it.
How much easier it would have been to fade away, as second-round leader Dustin Johnson did with his back-to-back 75s? How much more common, even among accomplished pros, to have an off week during a major and concede defeat? Zach Johnson, Monday’s winner, is an example of that. He had a top-10 finish in the Masters and a wobbly tie for 72nd at the U.S. Open coming into this event. Neither of them had to deal with the pressure of a Slam quest.
By coming this close to winning at stately St. Andrews, Spieth puts himself in a competitive class with Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer and even Tiger.
Arnie won the Masters and the U.S. Open in 1960, but despite a closing 68, lost by one stroke to Australia’s Kel Nagel at St. Andrews. Bad luck, since Palmer went on to win the next two British Open titles.
Jack won the first two majors of 1972, but despite a Sunday 66, finished second to Lee Trevino, again by one stroke, again at St. Andrews.
Tiger was going for a calendar Slam in 2002 until a storm-tossed 81 in the third round at Muirfield blew him off the leaderboard. That score, by the way, was a lot more shocking back then.
Ben Hogan is the only player to win the first three majors, doing it in 1953, but he couldn’t add the PGA Championship to that because of a conflict in their dates.
Oh, did I mention that Hogan and Spieth’s birthdays are two days apart, the old master on July 25 and the kid on July 27? Add it to the list of trivia we’ll be collecting on Spieth through the years, as we have all the great champions.
This guy’s not going anywhere but up.