Jordan Spieth nearing the end of a down year in 2018

Jordan Spieth has struggled to live up to wild expectations – both those from outside and those he places on himself – in 2018. Can he find some momentum late to carry over into the new season?

For Jordan Spieth, we are coming to the merciful end of a season that was never going to reach his astronomical expectations.

After three years of almost exclusively brilliant play, Spieth caught mononucleosis, which weighed on him early in the year. Mark Rolfing said on Golf Channel Tuesday morning he thought Spieth looked tired at the Travelers, held the week after the U.S. Open. That’s nearly two months ago.

But David Duval wondered if Spieth has contracted something else. Duval thinks Spieth has gotten caught up in holding himself to the standard he set in 2015, a standard that he said was “highly unlikely to happen again.” He didn’t call it the Perfection Disease, but he might as well have, even though Spieth’s play was not perfect that year, just very, very good.

ST LOUIS, MO – AUGUST 09: Jordan Spieth of the United States watches his shot on the 17th tee during the first round of the 2018 PGA Championship at Bellerive Country Club on August 9, 2018 in St Louis, Missouri. (Photo by Richard Heathcote/Getty Images) /

However, there are any number of golfers who have won big tournaments and were never heard from again. Whether the big victory released them from the need to continue to work on their games because they had a lengthy exemption, or because they had surpassed their own expectations, or because they expected they would win just by showing up and stopped practicing, or because they just didn’t know what to do next. No one ever knows. Sometimes they never get back. We certainly hope Spieth is not one of those.

A recent for instance is Danny Willett who won The Masters, and he followed it up with a season of total discontent and injury. Was it a result of his success or a release of the tension built up over years and years of striving for one of the pinnacles of golf? We don’t know.

Spieth does not seem cut from the cloth of one who just stops working because he has earned a cushy existence. He seems, if anything, overworking without results. Hence the perfection comments from Duval.

But as early as 2015, Spieth noted the wear and tear of competition, particularly at major championships.

"“You can’t put that much effort week-to-week or you just wouldn’t be able to finish the year out,” he said then. “Given golf isn’t an extremely physical, physically demanding sport, you’re walking, you have somebody carrying your own bag for you. But mentally, what you’re going through with that kind of pressure, that kind of work you’re putting in, that amount of thoughts through your head over an extended period of time of four hours around for four straight days.”"

Golfers who want to win have to be willing to put up with all the stress and the rest of the inconvenience of winning to get the best titles. That’s why someone like Jack Nicklaus is so remarkable. He could take it, although, granted, there wasn’t the hoopla in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s that there is today.

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Tiger Woods has shown us he is really tough because he wants to win so badly that he’s stood up to demands and questions day-after-day, week-after-week, year-after-year, and he still wants more. That takes a giant of a person. Most people would be crushed by the attention.

Where is Spieth now?

"“I feel somewhat under the radar this year,” Spieth said to media prior to the PGA. “I’ve kind of felt that way a lot this year, I don’t mind it.”"

That comment is different from the guy who said three years ago that he wanted to test himself when the lights were the brightest. If you are shying away from the limelight, you probably won’t get the trophy.

And so, it’s a balance. Like a human version of Dr. Suess’s pushmi-pullyu.

Next. PGA Championship: Gary Woodland rides hot putter to early lead. dark

What we will see over the next few seasons is whether Spieth can sort out his game and figure out what it is that makes him happiest. If he never wins another tournament again, he will still have one of the best PGA Tour careers ever. He will still be one of the classiest players to stick a tee in the ground. But it sure would be great to see him win the career grand slam!

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