Jordan Spieth: Working on Patience in Golf Swing

Jordan Spieth says his problem is technical, not mental.

Everyone at the top says, at that level, it’s all mental. But Jordan Spieth, in his press conference today, placed the blame for his recent performances on poor execution. However, the mental attitude had something to do with it.

Jordan Spieth became a victim of his own success early in the year and thought everything would be like his victory at the Hyundai Tournament of Champions, but it wasn’t. After a poor showing at the AT&T Pebble Beach, he finally had a good round on Sunday.

“I thought I had something going into L.A., and that first round was very much a shocker to me,” he admitted. “After shooting that horrid round the first round, I even had a chance to make the cut. I made enough birdies that second day to do it without the bogey.

That’s when his characteristic mental toughness did not come through.

“What could I have really done that first day to turn — what did I shoot, seven- or eight-over?” he recalled. “And I really could have turned that into four or five ( over) without just letting the emotions get the best of me, which is one-in-a-hopefully-a-couple-year round.”

He said he was too aggressive at the wrong times and didn’t respect the golf course enough.

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“What I try and do is, weeks like Riviera, try and just shrug it off as quickly as possible and convince ourselves it’s going to be the only missed the cut this year; and don’t let it happen again, and learn from exactly what made us miss the cut,” he said with determination.

He felt he could have made the cut if he’d been mentally tougher.

“I still could have prevented that,” he admitted. “When you look back on that, you don’t have your best stuff, still try to find a way to play the weekend.”

While it’s mostly mental at his level, Jordan Spieth is in fact working on minor aspects of his swing trying to be more patient. What he means by that is he hasn’t been completing his backswing. In practice, he’s been making adjustments.

“For whatever reason, on the West Coast, my swing became extremely short. And it wasn’t getting to parallel and therefore, my timing was just thrown off on a lot of shots that were played off uneven lies or with different wind conditions,” Speith explained. “It could happen because of cooler weather; you have more layers on and you just don’t get as full of a turn. Or it’s just something that just comes up randomly, and you just get over it.”

He thinks he has it now and felt good on the range. He even sent his coach a video of today’s session.

“I’ve been trying to just really load more and get more patient into my backswing, and it’s tough to trust a lot of times, because it feels like you’re going to hit it out to the right. But enough repetitions, and it starts to straighten out and you gain trust,” he added. “It’s something that’s weird that doesn’t get off very often.”

Now he wants to go back to doing what his team has done best in the last 12 months.

“We didn’t make the right decisions at certain points in time, more so than we saw last year,” he said about recent play. “But now that we’ve noticed that, we’ve been able to regroup.”

If Jordan Spieth has fixed his issues, whether they are mental or physical, look for him to turn on the afterburners again in March and April. But first he needs to kick into gear for his pairing with Rory McIlroy and Jason Day on Thursday at Doral.

Next: Current Betting Odds for the Masters

But before March and April, let’s see if Jordan Spieth can go to afterburners at Doral this week.

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