Jordan Spieth Blisters First Round with 63 to Tie Lead

After a number of close calls early in 2021, Jordan Spieth, who had been winless since the 2017 British Open, finally got a victory at the Valero Texas Open and followed that up with a third at the Masters. He had planned to take a week off, and then he caught COVID. That sidelined him until this week, the AT&T Byron Nelson.

Knowing he had just recovered from COVID, it was a huge surprise to see Spieth go bogey-less in the first round. But it was a shock to see him take a share of the first-round lead with a 55-foot, multiple breaking putt for eagle on the final hole. He raised his putter, had half a smile and strolled to retrieve the ball from the cup. He was nonchalant, actually.

“It just kind of fell in the left side of the hole,” he said to media after his round. “The roar was pretty electric. I mean, it’s just fun.”

Fun to shoot a 63? Yes, it is.

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However, he did notice some tiredness toward the end of the round which may have caused some loose shots. He muffed a wedge shot at the drivable par four 14th, but still made par. He thinned a tee shot. But he also hit a magnificent second shot to the par five 18th that kind of crawled to the putting surface.

He was jittery on the first tee.

“I had nerves on No. 1 like it’s the first shot of the season,” he admitted, adding that it was almost like at a major or Ryder Cup. “Just to make a birdie, just calmly, I thought that gave me a lot the confidence to start out today.”

He padded the start with four more birdies on the front at the 3rd, 5th, 6th, and 9th, making the turn in 31.

One the back, his most challenging shot was probably the second one at the 12th where he hit hybrid out of some schmutz on the right side of the hole, and, amazingly, it found its way to the putting surface. Shotlink calls it “native area.” Clearly, it’s not a place anybody wants to be.

Spieth and his caddie, Michael Greller, disagreed about what to do there. Greller wanted him to lay up, take the safe shot, hit a wedge to the green. And with Spieth’s wedge game, that’s always a good idea.

“I saw hit a hybrid, open the face up, and cut it onto the green,” Spieth said about his decision there. “I could get underneath it a little and flick up on it so that I could get it to launch a little higher off the bat.”

It became the Shot of the Day on Golf Channel.

The only fly in the ointment for what was an otherwise outstanding day of golf was that Speith said he felt tired the last few holes, due to COVID and not playing.

“I noticed it in my legs,” he said and compared it to being a basketball player. “When they get out, miss ten games, it takes a couple games to get your legs back.”

If he’s this good right now, with what he called laziness in his lower body toward the end of the round, how good can he be down the road? We have seen the Jordan Spieth show before, and we all know what it looks like when he’s on, when he’s off and when he’s just plain lucky. In other words, if he was struggling to get in and still eagled the last hole and shot a 63, how much better can he get? It could be an exciting spring and summer.

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