Jordan Spieth: PGA Championship is His “Elephant in The Room”

This week, Jordan Spieth begins his fifth attempt to complete the career grand slam. When asked about the challenge of realizing that dream at the PGA Championship, he said, “It’s certainly, at this point, given having won the other three, it’s an elephant in the room for me.”

Hopefully, Spieth does not go through life with the same frustration that Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson had over their careers. Both tried and failed to win the PGA to complete their personal career grand slams.

Spieth said he doesn’t talk about it with other people very often, but that doesn’t mean it’s not on his mind.

“If you just told me I was going to win one tournament the rest of my life, I’d say I want to win this one, given where things are at,” he admitted.

That’s how much it would mean to him to complete it. The reason is that he would be just the sixth player in history to accomplish the feat. Those who have are Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Gary Player, Ben Hogan, and Gene Sarazen.

Spieth thinks his best chance to date was the 2019 PGA at Bethpage Black which was won by Brooks Koepka, his second PGA in a row.  At previous PGAs, beginning in 2013, Jordan Spieth missed the cut in his first two, then finished T-2 in 2015, T13, T28, T12, T3.  In his last two, it’s been T71 and T30.

Looking at the fields, historically, the PGA Championship does not have qualifiers like the US Open and British Open have, which can add lesser ranked or unranked players to the field, although it does have 20 club professionals, most of whom do not make the cut. The PGA also has a larger number of competitors than the Masters.  For those two reasons alone, the competition is stiffer at the PGA, making it harder to win.  But none of them are easy.

On the plus side, Spieth likes Southern Hills and said it was like Colonial CC in Fort Worth, Texas, on steroids.  He won at Colonial in 2016. The difference between the two courses, he said, was that he could use driver more often at Southern Hills, and that there’s more undulation at Southern Hills. He didn’t say the undulation was on the course generally or on the greens, but probably he meant both.

Colonial CC is relatively flat compared to Southern Hills, and Colonial is not absolutely flat, but has many flattish stretches of holes. The greens at Colonial are definitely more user-friendly than Southern Hills which has putting surfaces that repel balls on the edges making the actual target area much smaller than the real square footage of the green.  Also, Perry Maxwell, who originally designed Southern Hills, co-designed Colonial.

Jordan Spieth is part of a star-studded group that also includes both Tiger and Rory

For Jordan Spieth, there’s no chance of him playing the first two rounds in any kind of obscurity.  He will be squarely in the limelight since he is playing with Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods.  It will be a dense crowd with these megastars in the group. There will be plenty of Spieth fans present, but Woods’ and McIlroy’s fan bases are always huge. There will be distractions, a lot of noise and a lot of movement in the crowd. For all three players, a lot of concentration will be needed.

“If I can play well these next couple days, given the crowds that will be out there, and I think the weekend might actually feel a little like a breather in a way, so that’s how I’m looking at it,” he explained.

He has said he thinks he has a good chance to get the slam over the course of his career, but those years have a way of sneaking up on golfers and before they know it, they are on the PGA Tour Champions.

“If I’m healthy, I’d look to have 20 chances at it, and maybe 1 out of 20,” he said. “I normally get better odds than that.”

He knows he’s also at the mercy of the good and bad bounces, good and bad lies, good and bad swings and putts.

“Maybe the ball will go — the bounces will go your way one of those weeks,” he added. “I’m not trying to force it this week I guess is the best way to say it.”

The elephant in the room is sitting down now, under the shade of a big tree at Southern Hills, awaiting the outcome.