Jordan Spieth Hates The Phrase “He’s Back!”

He’s heard it in restaurants.  He’s heard it in the gallery.  He probably hears it in his sleep. He’s back!

“I have one good Saturday in Phoenix and they’re like, ‘Oh, so you’re back.’ It’s like, I shot one good round,” Jordan Spieth complained at the PGA.

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In other words, people are perhaps not aware of the real state of Spieth’s game, which was on full display in Fort Worth, Texas, last week, when he was unable to hold off Jason Kokrak for the Charles Schwab Challenge title.

This week, he got a little more vocal about it.

“I hate the word ‘back.’  I hate that, ‘He’s back.’ I never went anywhere,” he insisted at The Memorial.

He said he has experienced the kind of thing that happens in careers where there are ups and downs. Where you don’t win every time you tee it up.

Even Jack Nicklaus, who won 73 times on the PGA Tour, played in 586 Tour events plus numerous international tournaments and special events.  There were plenty of weeks when he didn’t win or when he didn’t have it. Now granted, he also finished second 58 times and third 36 times for a total of 137 top three places in his regular tour career. And who knows if his list of appearances counted British Opens or not because they were not considered official victories by the PGA Tour until fairly recently.

The point is, even the very best aren’t their very best all the time. Not Nicklaus, not Tiger Woods, and certainly not Jordan Spieth, who recently chalked up his 12th career title in nine years as a professional.

At the Charles Schwab Challenge, we saw the good, the bad and the ugly from Spieth, from a first round 63 to a final round 73.  The CBS announcers were even drawn into the what’s he doing with his swing conversation with Sir Nick Faldo and Ian Baker-Finch both pointing out different aspects.  One network did a side-by-side comparison of Spieth’s swing at the top now and a few years ago, and the two were nothing alike.

In addition to everyone wondering what’s going on with Spieth, he’s suffered a little bit from two steps forward, one step back syndrome.  He won at Valero.  Thought he was on the upswing. Had a good performance at the Masters, with T-3 finish. Then he promptly caught COVID.

This guy has had more annoying illness interruptions than anyone in recent memory.  There was the mononucleosis after the fall of 2017, which he said was his second bout with it.  Now, the pandemic disease, just after the Masters in 2021. One hopes he doesn’t buy any bananas, walk near any black cats or even get paired with anybody who sneezes a lot.

At the Masters, when asked about his game, Spieth said, “I just got further off than normally professionals get, and so it’s been a climb back. And I feel on the right path, but there’s still a lot of work to go.”

The Schwab just showed us how true that statement was.  So much so that he admitted after the final round, “I was taking the club back and had no freaking clue where it was going to go.”

He was probably lucky to post a 73.

Now, at The Memorial, he’s going to face a course that allows him more room off the tee, but has, historically, had penal rough.  A course where the iron game, second shots and success on the par fives, determine the winner.  The greens are also mighty treacherous.

So, with about 50 percent of his game working, the question for Spieth is going to be, can he cobble together a game that will allow him to find success at a very difficult golf track?

“I know what I need to do,” he said about fixing his game.  “It’s just reversing tens of thousands of swings the wrong way and there’s a few different pieces to it and, unfortunately, sometimes in tournaments, right now, I still revert back.”

And, while no one mentioned this during the end of 2020 or early in 2021, before his victory at the Valero Texas Open, Spieth had just one year left on his five-year British Open victory.  He needed to win soon.  His win at the Valero Texas Open gave him two years from 2021, at least.  So, he has time to figure out his game and still remain an exempt player.

That’s the real danger of getting off track.  Sometimes golfers never find their way back, and sometimes they are fine with that.  In Jordan Spieth’s case, it seems that he wants to grab the brass ring another time or two, and that’s good because Spieth is good for golf.  He’s exciting to watch, almost as unpredictable as Phil Mickelson.