2022 Valero Texas Open: Top 10 power rankings at TPC San Antonio
After a 2021 that brought the magic back to his game, Jordan Spieth hasn’t been quite as sharp a year later.
Aside from a runner-up finish at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, Spieth lacks a top-10 and has missed a couple of cuts.
He failed to advance out of group play at last week’s WGC-Dell Match Play in his old college town of Austin, Texas.
While Spieth couldn’t get the home cooking going last week, I expect his fortunes to turn around here in San Antonio.
The Dallas, Texas native has a great history at the Valero Texas Open. In six starts, he’s made five cuts and has three top-10s.
Spieth was runner up in 2015 with rounds of 71-69-71-70 to finish four back of Jimmy Walker but three ahead of third place.
Spieth will attempt to defend his 2021 Texas Open title this week
The former Texas Longhorn got it done at this event in 2021, ending a four-year winless streak on the PGA Tour.
Spieth posted 67-70-67-66 to beat another horse for the course, Charley Hoffman, by two. Spieth was four clear of third place, six clear of fourth, and eight clear of fifth.
“Yeah, the golf course here is really challenging. It’s very rare you get to play it without a 15-mile an hour wind…” Spieth was transcribed by Tee Scripts in 2021. “It’s just a really difficult driving golf course. You can’t make many mistakes off the tee, you’ve got to be hitting fairways because it’s not just like bunkers on one side. A lot of holes you have that rocks and that brush off both sides of the fairway.”
Spieth was in the top 10 in the field in 2021 in all strokes gained categories save for off the tee. He gained more than five strokes putting for the week, including 2.691 on Sunday to finish off the victory. His quote above states how important it is to drive the ball well. That’s true, unless you’ve got an elite recovery game like he does. Spieth won by multiple shots in spite of hitting just 29 of 56 fairway (51.79%) to rank T-78th.
On the season, the 28-year-old ranks a surprising 23rd in driving distance (308.6), up from 66th (299.5) in 2020-21. He’s not been as accurate as he’d like, but sitting 10th in proximity from the rough (39’11”) is certainly helpful.