By Ron Kaspriske
If social distancing during the pandemic has revealed anything noteworthy about how PGA Tour pros go about their business, it might be just how much thought Jordan Spieth puts into every shot he hits. Without large galleries to muffle what is said inside tournament ropes, Spieth’s conversations with his caddie, Michael Greller, have been a fascinating peek inside the mind of one of the game’s most thoughtful and determined players.

“He’s worked very hard over a long period to get his swing to where, when he takes the club back, he’s only got a picture in his mind about the ball flight he’s trying to create. That’s what he’s talking [to Michael] about,” says his longtime coach, Cameron McCormick. “His swing is now jelling with what he sees. There’s no conflict.”

A victory (the Valero Texas Open) and four other top-four finishes in a stretch of eight events earlier in 2021 speak to the resurgence of Spieth and the golf swing that won three majors. McCormick says that Jordan 3.0 is a blend of what he did right earlier in his career and some new wrinkles—and how he arrived at this point is what’s really interesting.

“We reverse-engineered the swing changes starting with creating a good feel at impact and then building the rest around that,” McCormick says. “We recognized that if he started feeling better about impact, then pre-impact, then transition, the jigsaw-puzzle pieces fit together really well. Make sense?”

It does, but that’s not typically the way elite golfers go about improving. Diagnostics usually follow the sequence of the swing, starting at address. But Spieth and McCormick went directly to the moment of truth, the strike, and worked backward. Spieth is now in a place where he’s “giving himself permission to go after the ball,” McCormick says, and he has returned to predominantly hitting a “bullet cut,” meaning a lower-flying drive that starts a little left and works back to the right and rolls out once it lands.

Spieth is not chasing yards. He’s keeping his tee shots in play and relying on his irons and short game to challenge the field regularly since finishing tied for fourth in the Waste Management Phoenix Open in February. Spieth ranked in the top 25 in strokes gained/approach the green and top 15 in putting average on tour through April.

The key is that at the top of the swing, Spieth senses the club is in great position to create the feel he wants through impact. “He’s swinging much more like he did when he first came out on tour,” McCormick says.

Specifically, Spieth takes the club back on a steeper angle than he returns it to the ball. He doesn’t roll his forearms clockwise through the middle of the backswing, and the butt end of the shaft points inside his target line as he approaches the top. But in transition, things dramatically change. As Spieth begins to unwind aggressively starting with hip rotation, the shaft flattens with the butt end now pointing at the ball or even outside the target line. From there, Spieth knows he can just turn hard and produce the ball flight he sees in his mind during those in-depth conversations with Greller.

If you want to know what that move feels like, Spieth and McCormick talk about the club going from “light to heavy.” It’s light as Spieth takes the club back, by virtue of the shaft being more vertical in orientation. But when Spieth transitions into the downswing, the club starts to feel heavy in his right hand because the shaft is lying down or flattening.

“That’s what some people call the slot or the hitting position,” McCormick says. “The earlier he can set that hitting position, the better he feels about it. It’s funny, but when he won at Valero and finished third at Augusta, he actually got to the point where he was setting it up way too early. He couldn’t wait to get there.”

Overcooking a great swing feel aside, Spieth is mostly doing everything right with his full swing these days, McCormick says. He’s gripping the club slightly stronger after recovering from a hand injury that forced him to hold the club in a weaker position in recent years. That weak grip helped contribute to his predominant miss right of the target. He’s also standing more athletically over the ball (a deeper hip hinge), McCormick says. And when he swings through the impact zone and gets into the follow-through, it’s a result of good body turn and a feeling of passive hands.

He can still hit a draw and get some extra distance when he needs it, but it’s not something Spieth looks to do often.

“With his covered cut, you’d expect he’d lose some carry distance because he’s launching the ball lower,” McCormick says. “But honestly, so what, he’s still hitting it around 300 yards and control trumps distance.”

ATHLETIC FROM THE START

Among the improvements Jordan Spieth and his coach, Cameron McCormick, have worked on is to get Spieth in a more athletic setup. A deeper hip hinge at address (above left) puts him in position to make a more dynamic swing.

A GRIP THAT WORKS BETTER FOR HIS BALL FLIGHT

Since recovering from a painful injury to his left hand, Spieth has been able to strengthen the orientation of his hands on the club so the right palm is turned slightly more under the shaft (above right). This gives him better control of the clubface, so he doesn’t lose many shots to the right.

THE MOVE SPIETH CAN’T WAIT TO MAKE

Spieth takes the club back with the shaft in a more vertical position as he reaches the top but then lets it flatten during the transition to the downswing (above left). From a feel standpoint, this “laying down” of the shaft mentally gives him the green light to go after the ball aggressively.

GOOD ROTATION IS KEY

Spieth isn’t trying to guide the clubhead into the ball with his hands. Instead, impact is a result of good body rotation toward the target in the throughswing (above right). He gets the club in the position he wants at the top of the swing and then it’s turn, turn, turn.

Editor’s Note: This cover story appears in June 2021 issue of Golf Digest Middle East. Read our latest issue in its entirety here.

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By Shane Ryan
On Monday, Ryan Lavner at GolfChannel.com reported that Jordan Spieth suffered a bone chip in his left hand in early 2018, likely sustained while weightlifting, and that the injury plays a big part in explaining his shocking fall down the World Ranking through the rest of that year, culminating in a low point where he refused to touch his clubs for weeks at the end of 2020. His decision to play through pain rather than undergoing arthroscopic injury is one he now regrets, as it forced him to use a weaker grip and resist important swing changes pushed by his coach Cameron McCormick.

Monday afternoon, appearing before the media ahead of this week’s WGC-Dell Match Play, Spieth elaborated on the difficult period.

“It’s just a matter of how bad it’s bugging you,” he explained of his decision to avoid surgery. “And it was for awhile there, kind of in the spring of 2018 through that fall, and then it got a little better … probably because I started swinging so poorly.”

He says he’s pain-free now, but regrets how he fought McCormick on strengthening his grip due to the pain, and the choice to soldier through in the hopes of fixing things in the offseason.

“I didn’t think there was a huge deal with it,” he said of discovering the problem. “If I taped it up, it didn’t feel so bad, so I just—you know, I went out each day trying to play the best golf I could play. … I wouldn’t blame anything on it other than that I probably fought changes that would have helped me turn things in the right direction a little bit sooner.”

The worst of the pain lingered at least to the end of 2018, when he remembers he and Justin Thomas each suffering their own hand woes at the Paris Ryder Cup. The fact that he’s bringing it up to the media today, in 2021, wasn’t deliberate, he said. He was only reflecting on his struggles, and it remains fresh in his mind because it was the first time he truly had to play through pain.

The technical explanation for how the injury affected his game isn’t too technical at all: Forced to use a weak grip to avoid pain, his club face opened, and he was forced to flip at impact. To play at his usual level, the timing had to be perfect, and he could manage it for stretches. Over four rounds, though, eventually something would short-circuit, and he found it impossible to remain consistently excellent with such a small margin for error.

At this point, he’s re-strengthened his grip, the pain is gone, and he credits the change with his improved play. There are still hiccups—he felt twinges as recently as the Players Championship—but his overall trajectory is vastly improved, and he’s once more on the verge of the world top 50.

“I’m 27, I’ve got a long road ahead, hopefully it’s one that’s full of a lot of consistent golf and continued progression like the last month or so,” he said. “I’ve got a few regrets, and it is what it is. I think that’s pretty normal for anyone’s career.”

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By Matthew Rudy
If Brandel Chamblee was looking for an outlet to relieve some of his virus-induced social isolation this week, he found it.

The Golf Channel commentator used a two-part Golfweek interview to light golf coaches on fire, claiming (among other things) that “teachers are being exposed for their idiocy,” and that the flawed teaching philosophies permeating PGA Tour practice areas are ending more careers than they help. He proceeded to say that the teachers spreading those philosophies are being “bitch-slapped by reality” and the wisdom of crowds on social media and YouTube. “There it is. You’re wrong and they’re right.”

The airing of grievances continued with a dismissive wave at Golf Digest’s 50 Best Teachers list, as Chamblee continued: “I go look up all their players and then see are they better or worse? I go online, I look at their ideas and some of them crack me up.” He had a specific takedown of Jordan Spieth and his coach, Cameron McCormick, and Rickie Fowler for his decision to start working with a new coach in John Tillery.

Claude Harmon III falls into the former category, having handled the week-to-week tour work with Fowler for three years in tandem with his father, Butch Harmon. The younger Harmon said he admires Chamblee’s television skills but dismissed the wave of anti-instructor comments as a wrestling-style storyline designed to produce heat and attention.

“I worked at Sky TV for four years doing what Brandel does, and it’s brutal how hard that job is,” says Harmon, who coaches Brooks Koepka. “Brandel is a television character. He’s an actor. He has a role he performs, and he does a great job at it. Brandel is a thinker, and he does a lot of research. He’s 100 percent entitled to his opinions. But when it comes to talking about the swing and about golf instruction, it’s hard to take him seriously. He doesn’t give lessons, or have a body of work to evaluate.”

Chamblee was pointed and specific in his critique of Spieth’s swing, comparing video of swings from 2015 and today, and essentially calling teaching malpractice on McCormick for what Chamblee characterised as balance issues in Spieth’s swing.

“Why would his teacher tell him to change that? Why? He’s either being told to do that or whoever’s watching him doesn’t see that he’s doing that,” said Chamblee. “That would take two seconds to fix.”

McCormick declined to comment on the critical remarks, but Claude Harmon said Chamblee’s volley reminded him of last April, when Chamblee torched Koepka ahead of the Masters for changing his body to prepare for an ESPN photoshoot.

“It takes two minutes to call somebody’s agent to reach out, or, better yet, to walk over to Brooks or to me or to anybody else on a practice range and say what you want to say or ask questions to get some more information. Or, you can sit at 35,000 feet and criticize,” says Harmon. “The Spieth stuff? The problem is that I never see Brandel in the world I live in. Gary Koch comes and stands on the range for hours, just watching. And if he thinks he’s going to talk about a player, he asks questions so he can get details and context. The only time I’ve even seen Brandel at a tour event is in a cart, getting driven back and forth from the media compound.”

Harmon wasn’t the only teacher to bristle at Chamblee’s characterizations. Michael Breed started his SiriusXM PGA Tour Radio show on Thursday with a fastball high and tight, calling Chamblee’s comments sour grapes for his own shortcomings as a player. “What you’re really hearing is a guy who was frustrated he didn’t perform at the level he thought he should have performed at,” said Breed. “And it has to be somebody’s fault. It can’t be mine, so it has to be a coach or a teacher. Maybe you just weren’t that good.”

Chamblee has been outspoken about how “modern” golf instruction has robbed players of the natural athleticism they could be using to play better—and has said he was one of those victims—dropping off the PGA Tour in the early 2000s after almost a decade of consistently good play and one victory. It led to him writing his 2016 book, The Anatomy of Greatness, in which he said amateurs would be better off modelling what historical champions did instead of blindly following modern swing theories.

Tour coach Terry Rowles says Chamblee obscured the truth in some of what he said—that players can be hurt by ineffective coaching—with uncharacteristically clumsy language. “I know Brandel enjoys classic literature, and I know he knows that words have power. It sounded like a generalized, ranting cheap shot,” says Rowles, who works with Aaron Baddeley.

“Do some players take too much? Yes. Do some coaches give too much? Yes. It’s hard to balance the give and take precisely all of the time. Humans are messy. The same information that saves one player would ruin the next. How does that fit in with what you would see on YouTube? Only somebody who has never coached would say it was all easy and obvious.”

That was where Harmon left it, too. “My job would be so much easier if I could just give opinions in a vacuum, but my opinions have consequences. His don’t,” Harmon said. “Brandel is in the opinion business. I’m in the results business.”

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Ryu, 27, now has taken up ballet. She already had been a foodie, and has developed a keen interest in wine, Napa Valley cabernets, among them a 2013 Far Niente cab she received from her instructor, Cameron McCormick, after winning the ANA Inspiration a year ago.

“He knows what I like,” she wrote on Instagram.

What she likes is depth in her life, a well-rounded and grounded one that helps explain why she has no issue with what others might have perceived as a slight: that she finished both first and second in the ANA Inspiration last year.

She won the tournament in a playoff with Lexi Thompson, but came in second in media coverage. The four-stroke penalty assessed to Thompson in the midst of the final round dominated game stories and television news accounts.

Professional golfers don’t travel light, and Ryu had no interest in adding bitterness to the weight of her baggage. “I understand the whole situation,” she simply said last week.

Meanwhile, as she prepares to defend her ANA title this week at Mission Hills Country club, she has eagerly moved on to loftier aspirations.

“The grand slam has become my next goal, especially when you see your friend is a grand slammer, a Hall of Famer,” she said of Inbee Park, her best friend. “I really didn’t expect to dream about it, but I thought after having two majors under my belt, OK, I can do it.”

Jeff Gross
Thompson’s rules controversy, not Ryu’s ultimate victory, was the focus on Sunday of last year’s ANA Inspiration.

Ryu has two legs of the four-tournament Slam (before the LPGA declared the Evian Championship a fifth major), having formally introduced herself to an American audience with her U.S. Women’s Open victory in 2011.

She, too, would like a second shot at occupying the No. 1 position in the Rolex Rankings that she held for 19 weeks last year after winning the Walmart NW Arkansas Championship.

“Actually I didn’t expect that I would become No. 1 back then,” Ryu said. “Before, I was No. 3 or 4. When you’re not even second, you’re not expecting it. That one came quicker than expected. The first two weeks I didn’t really feel it that much. Then I started to realize how much pressure I had.

“But the really good thing is that Inbee is my good friend, a former No. 1. Yani [Tseng] is my good friend, a former No. 1. Ai [Miyazato] is my good friend, a former No. 1. Like Yani said, when she was No. 1, she felt like she played golf for other people. Then Inbee told me she really felt like she had to play well every time because she was No. 1. Ai said she felt she couldn’t really enjoy it at that moment because she had so much pressure.

“Everyone is giving me [advice] to just think about yourself. I couldn’t do it 100 percent. I really tried hard to do it. When I look back, I’m kind of disappointed about my season last year, when I was No. 1. I didn’t win any tournaments.”

It is every professional’s lament, that there is always room for improvement, but Ryu did not leave much room last year. She won twice, was a co-Rolex Player of the Year (with Sung Hyun Park} and won the Rolex Annika Major Award for best aggregate performance in the major championships.

Doug Pensinger/Getty Images
Ryu wasn’t even a member of the LPGA when she recorded her first major victory at the 2011 U.S. Women’s Open. Now she’s got her sights set on winning the career Grand Slam.

She is not inclined to settle for the status quo, hence her decision in 2016, in a year in which golf was added to the Olympics, to change her coach and her swing.

“The Olympics was my big goal,” she said. “So when I decided to change my coach, a lot of people say, ‘So Yeon, you’re crazy. This is your big year. Why did you decide to change your swing?’ Playing in the Olympics was my goal, but was not my last goal. I really felt I needed to change something to become the No. 1 player.”

Yet her goals are not obsessions. It is the reason she took up ballet, for instance. “I like to do something different,” she said. “I feel that all I’m doing is related to golf. I just wanted to do something else not related to golf.”

She also has retained her interest in music. “I would say my handicap [as a musician] was 0 when I was young,” she said. “Right now, I’m probably a 10. I’m so rusty. It’s the same as golf when you stop playing. I know I used to be great, and if I’m playing [music] right now I can’t listen to myself because it’s not that great. I’m mad at myself that I stopped doing it.

“I’m playing [the piano] with right hand only, left hand only, just trying to get back on track. I’m not really good at it, not really satisfied with my piano skill right now. I’m actually thinking of buying a piano.”

Music and dance, food and wine, and a golf game as good as any in women’s golf. Life is good. Far Niente says it best, an Italian phrase that translates to “without a care.”

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By John Huggan
Jordan Spieth hadn’t played since Sunday at the Presidents Cup seven weeks earlier, and it showed at times as he attempted to defend his title at the Australian Open. But the three-time major champion performed with some distinction on the final day, even if it was too late to etch his name on the Stonehaven Cup for a third time.

Frustratingly ineffective on the greens over the first 54 holes, Spieth, with his coach Cameron McCormick on the bag temporarily this week, finished with a flourish—an eagle on the 18th—his 67 hauling him up to eighth place, five strokes behind eventual champion Cameron Davis.

“It was a great finish, it was nice,” Spieth said. “I felt like I hit a lot of really beautiful shots that weren’t necessarily rewarded today based on just trying to judge the cross winds. Cam was getting frustrated in himself. We were talking through the shots, and I said cross winds are a caddie and player’s worst enemy. It would have been the same struggle no matter who was on the bag. That’s all it was today. I really felt like I shot 62 but it was 67. I had so many looks [at birdie].”

On the positive side, Spieth, playing for the first time since competing at the Presidents Cup seven weeks earlier, was pleased at how much he and McCormick had learned over the course of the 72 holes.

“We picked up quite a bit, stuff that’s personal between the two of us,” he said. “I was voicing a lot more than I would have ever voiced to [regular caddie] Michael [Grellar]. I would have just said, OK, get over it Jordan and go, but I thought it was important for Cam to hear how I was feeling hole after hole, day after day and about different situations. We actually made a lot of progress in that sense, or at least have a good starting point to make some progress this off-season.”

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By Jaime Diaz
There are myriad reasons Jordan Spieth won the Open Championship at Royal Birkdale. Probably the overriding one was articulated by Johnny Miller in 2015:

“So many guys today seem to win by accident, but Spieth doesn’t,” Miller said for a story in Golf Digest. “His game is ruled by that most important word: intent. Like Tiger, I believe he truly plays every tournament to win.”

Analytics mavens might point to Spieth’s underrated iron play, by his ranking first on the PGA Tour in strokes gained/approach to the green and second in GIR. There’s Michael Greller, who not only said the right things on two different crucial occasions to Spieth on Sunday, but triangulated the right yardage from his player’s position in the boondocks on the 13th hole. And of course, there’s the putter, which will become legendary for Spieth’s 11th win. Golf historian and statistician Dr. Lou Riccio maintains Spieth’s birdie-eagle-birdie-birdie run from Nos. 14-17 is only surpassed by Jerry Barber making putts of 20, 40 and 60 feet on the last three holes of the 1961 PGA Championship to get into a playoff and, ultimately, win.

But as spectacular as Spieth’s flat stick was late in the round, it was uneven early. Spieth missed four putts from inside 10 feet on Birkdale’s front nine Sunday. He was shaky, and admitted that the short ones he willed in on Nos. 10, 11 and 12 might have been the most taxing shots he hit all day. But after he holed the “massive” eight-footer for bogey on the 13th, “the lid came off,” he said, and “instead of three-footers looking like 30-footers, 30-footers looked three-footers.”

But that bogey putt, it should not be forgotten, was set up by an artful pitch and run with a lob wedge that had to land on a precise spot, then almost die at the top of a slope before trickling down near the hole. It was every bit as creative and good as the famously foreshadowing pitch-and-run that Seve Ballesteros fashioned on the 18th at Birkdale in 1976 when he was runner-up to Miller, and a lot more important.

Christian Petersen
Jordan Spieth chips on the 13th hole during the final round of the 146th Open Championship at Royal Birkdale. This would set up a bogey on a crazy hole that would then set up his back-nine run to win the Claret Jug

Also underrated in Spieth’s closing stretch was his third on the par-5 17th—a fizzing punch from 56 yards that skipped up to a pin set on a narrow shelf before spinning and stopping seven feet above the cup. After Kuchar made a 15-footer for birdie, Spieth made his to keep a two-stroke cushion, allowing him to walk to the 18th tee—where he faced a left to right wind to a narrow fairway—with a more relaxed mind.

In the previous three rounds, Spieth had expertly improvised with his wedges around the greens several times, mostly to save crucial pars. His 65s on Thursday and Saturday were bogey-free. He executed one of Lee Trevino’s axioms: “You’ve got to keep your birdies.”

It’s hard to prove statistically—although I would argue strokes gained/around the green is the least precise of the “strokes gained” stats, because the difficulty of individual short shots can’t currently be measured for difficultly—but Spieth is the best in golf on such shots, and without question the best among the top players.

Sure, Spieth has hit bad short-game shots when it’s mattered in a major. His chunk from the drop zone on the 12th at Augusta National in 2016 led to a killing quadruple bogey, and with a two-stroke lead in the U.S. Open on the 71st hole at Chambers Bay in 2015, he fluffed a shot from greenside rough into a bunker and made double bogey. But in general, he is pure money with a wedge in his hand, with hole-outs from the sand at climatic moments in winning the John Deere in 2013 and at Hartford this year. And the best shot Spieth hit in winning the 2015 Masters was a ridiculously risky flop from a downhill lie to a short pin to save par on the 18th hole on Saturday.

Spieth does it with sound method; exceptional hand-eye coordination; a love for the variety, imagination and challenge of the short shots; and the nerve to take on the highest degree of difficultly under pressure. Finally, it’s the awareness that such shots are vital numerically—but even more psychologically—to saving rounds and ultimately, victories.

There will always be debate about the best short game in history. The mythical title usually goes to Ballesteros, who developed the magic in his hands on the sands of Pedrena off the Bay of Biscay. But it means that other virtuosos such as Raymond Floyd, Hubert Green and Luke Donald get short shrift. But with three majors at a just-turned 24, Spieth can be projected to surpass even Seve.

So in the afterglow of Birkdale, Spieth’s short game should not only be celebrated but become a reference point to shape and improve the top of the game going forward.

Why? Because too many of today’s top power players simply aren’t very good around the green. The easy answer to why no top player seems to win that often in the post-Tiger era? Because other than Spieth, among the top 20 in the World Ranking, arguably no one has the kind of world-class short game that can consistently save the day when the long game is off, as it often is for even the very best.

It’s not that Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson, Hideki Matsuyama, Jason Day, Brooks Koepka and Justin Thomas (to name a few) are bad around the green. But none of them are great. The fact is, we are currently in a historical dearth when it comes to tour pros who combine power and touch, the most time-honored formula to be the best player in the world.

Think about the very best of last 40 years, the players who either won the most majors or consistently contended for them. Other than Nick Faldo and Nick Price (who made up for lack of distance with superb iron games), the very best were not only long, they had supreme short games. The sequence of Tom Watson, Ballesteros, Greg Norman. Fred Couples, Ernie Els, Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods portrays a style that was similarly in kind and differed only in degree.

For whatever reason, perhaps the echo chamber that keeps repeating that power is indispensable, perhaps a collective lack of dedication to putting hours in around the chipping green, few of today’s top players are known for their short games. And it’s instructive that it was working on his wedges that was the most important factor in Dustin Johnson rising to being the current No. 1.

RELATED: Jordan Spieth comes up huge at just the right time

Jack Nicklaus, of all people, underestimated the short game. As a junior player, his teacher, Jack Grout, emphasized learning the full swing. “I didn’t practice my short game, because I didn’t know what to practice,” Nicklaus said in 2010. “I never learned anything.” He was so dominant early with his ball striking that he told himself “I didn’t need one.” But when Nicklaus encountered serious chipping problems in 1979, he sought help from old rival Phil Rodgers and dramatically improved his wedge play, leading to his winning two majors in 1980. Looking back, Nicklaus wishes he’d tried to master the short game decades before. “It was foolish of me to believe it was good enough,” he said.

There’s evidence McIlroy will feel the same way if he doesn’t devote more focus to his short game. Too often wasting strokes and eroding patience with “soft” bogeys from around the green on what should be fairly routine up and downs, McIlroy’s weakness was conspicuous at Birkdale.

Entering the weekend five behind Spieth, McIlroy came storming out for the third round with three birdies in his first five holes. But on the par-3 sixth hole, he pulled a short iron, leaving him with a downhill lie in high grass to an uphill pin about 30 feet away. It wasn’t an easy shot, but one that it was easy to envision Spieth getting within five feet. But rather than give the ball a firm bump into the hill McIlroy decelerated and fluffed the ball less than halfway to the hole, making a momentum-stopping bogey. Worse, on the next hole, after leaving a short approach 10 yards short of the green, McIlroy mishit a straightforward pitch-and-run, the ball skidding 20 feet past the hole. Ultimately, McIlroy had a strong Sunday to finish T-4, but in terms of the small margins that determine who wins major championships, his short game had unnecessarily left him too much to do.

Will Spieth’s example swing the pendulum back, so that the power players will start to focus on their touch? It should be apparent that especially in majors, where Spieth has now led 15 rounds out of the 70 he’s played, that he is winning more because he is better at touch than his peers are at power. And maybe that, when all is said and done, in the biggest events, touch is more important than power.

Spieth seems to have a firm belief in where his advantage lies. “There are places I can get better,” he said in 2016. “Ball-striking-wise, tee ball I can get stronger, I can hit it further. My short game I want to keep consistent, keep exactly where it’s at.”

And he went on to say, “You’re going to make putts, you’re going to miss putts, you’re going to have off days, on days. I believe it comes down to when the lights are on, and you don’t have your best stuff, can you create your ‘on’ days?”

At least in the recent history of the game, there has never been a better example of a player doing just that than Spieth on the back nine at Birkdale. And his most consistent creator? The short game.

RELATED: 25 fun facts about Jordan Spieth

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After the clutch comeback that followed his great bogey escape from the giant dunes in the (very) rough proximity of Royal Birkdale’s 13th fairway, via the bonce of an unsuspecting spectator and a lengthy detour through the club-manufacturers’ lorries parked on the surprisingly in-bounds practice range, Spieth allowed us to go orienteering through his mind. It was a frank and fascinating insight into the psyche of a complex 23-year-old on the precipice of true greatness, as compelling as his golf had been other worldly over the final six holes.

There is vulnerability within, as witnessed early on the final afternoon of the 146th Open Championship when Spieth inexplicably allowed a three shot overnight lead to vanish within four holes in a blaze of yanked drives and pushed or pulled putts. Neither is he immune to genuine anxiety as was so visibly apparent on 13 as he reeled away, hands in head, at the horror of a big blocked tee shot he’d just sent sailing a good 70 yards off line.

Later came a snapshot of the ambition, expectation and ego that allowed the Texan to somehow regroup from a disastrous opening 12 holes and that tee shot to become the youngest Champion Golfer-of-the-Year since Seve Ballesteros in 1979, and the first man to post all four rounds in the 60s at Birkdale (65-69-65-69) for a record -12, 268 aggregate (eclipsing Ian Baker-Finch’s 272 total in 1991).

Very rarely do professional golfers, much less a (now) three-time major champion with a tough-as-old cowboy boots “closer” reputation to protect, allow access into the deeper recesses.

“I thought before the round, I have a reputation as being able to close, but I was hesitant in saying ‘majors’, to myself, because there was a lot of…I put a lot of pressure on myself unfortunately, and not on purpose, before the round today, just thinking this is the best opportunity that I’ve had since the 2016 Masters,” Spieth revealed, rewinding minds to Augusta National two Aprils ago where a watery quadruple bogey 7 at Rae’s Creek got in the way of a second Green Jacket and first exposed the fallibility within every golfer.

“And if it weren’t to go my way today, then all I’m going to be questioned about and thought about and murmured about is in comparison to that, and that adds a lot of pressure.”

The inexplicable start, his trusty Scotty Cameron blade suddenly failing him from short range, didn’t help any. “After four holes it was even more so. I wasn’t questioning myself as a closer, but I was questioning why I couldn’t just perform the shots that I was before.

“Sometimes you just can’t really figure it out, put your finger on it. Am I pulling it? Pushing it? Am I doing both? What’s going on with the [putting] stroke? It’s just searching. And during the round today I definitely thought while any kind of fear or advantage that you can have in this moment and over other individuals [longer term], not just Matt Kuchar today, but other people that are watching, that’s being taken away by the way that I’m playing right now. And that was really tough to swallow.

“That kind of stuff goes into your head. I mean, we walked for two minutes, three minutes in between shots. And you can’t just go blank. You wish you could, but thoughts creep in.”

It’s fair to surmise Kuchar and co. now know Spieth can bring the fear from anywhere and at anytime.

Kuchar brought far more than his trademark awe-shucks demeanour to the the wholly unexpected final round duel (given the control Spieth had displayed from tee to green through 54 holes) and  stood on the 14th tee with a one shot lead. By the time he departed the 17th green, having negotiated the four hole stretch in two under himself, he was two behind.

Spieth’s birdie, eagle, birdie, birdie “burst” in the same stretch of holes was the stuff of Open legend, golf theatre that even Golf Digest’s learnered Jaime Diaz, a man whose seen his share of major magic, rates beyond modern compare.

The near ace on 14 from 201 yards, the unfathomable 48-foot eagle putt up and down dale and up again on 15 with its “pick that up” exclamation mark/command to bagman Michael Greller. The 30-foot, dead-weight birdie bomb on 16 and the skipped wedge-eight footer on 17 for another gain that ensured he could savour the greatest walk in golf up 18.

“It was impressive stuff and when someone does something like that, you just have to tip your cap and say well done,” Kuchar, so magnanimous in defeat, would say.

Before the lazered 6 iron on 14 came the great escape at 13 where Spieth kept a cool head in the chaos and cleverly used The Rules of Golf to his advantage as they have always been intended to be. The chunked-pushed 3-iron that he hit back over the dunes, just shy of 22 minutes after he took the unplayable, was a smart play as it kept him short of a pot bunker guarding the front of the green. The resulting up and down was arguably the defining moment of the championship.

“That [8-foot] putt on 13 was just massive,” Spieth agreed. “I don’t know how I made a five, I don’t think I’ll ever know, it’s like I got away with murder.”

Greller, the canny caddy cum on-course psychologist, didn’t let the moment pass, making a point of telling his charge: “That’s a momentum shift right there.”

Greller’s big play had actually come on the path leading from the 7th tee when he called Spieth back as the Open was rapidly and dangerously passing the Texan by. Before Birkdale, Spieth had been snapped on vacation in Cabo San Lucas with, among others, Michael Jordan, Michael Phelps and [Seattle Seahawks quarterback] Russell Wilson, and Greller used the imagery to quietly refocus his man.

“Michael did a great thing today, he said ‘I’ve got something to say to you: He said do you remember that group you were with? ‘You’re that caliber of an athlete. But I need you to believe that right now because you’re in a great position in this tournament. This is a new tournament. We’re starting over here’.

“He had as much influence for sure on this win as any. He and Cameron [manager Cameron McCormick] have been very important in the mental side of the game for me in the past couple of years. Dealing with my own expectations and dealing with coming off a year like ’15 [when he won the Masters and US Open and gave the calendar year grand slam a run with a T4 finish at St.Andrews and second at the US PGA Championship at Whistling Straits], and trying to game plan and set goals.

“This trophy is as much mine as it is his [Greller’s and presumably McCormick], as I was getting down on myself a bit for a while there.”

The firm pep talk, the clever use of the rules and flushed six 6-iron flicked a switch. Spieth somehow did what great players do in adversity. He found just three fairways on Sunday, and yet he found a way to win. It was brave, gritty, glorious.

Indeed, it was Tiger-esque. Spieth too has that innate ability to will the ball into the cup (often without toughing the sides) where others find an invisible force-field with the flat-stick.

A week from his 24th birthday, Spieth joined Jack Nicklaus as the only player to have won three quarters of a career grand slam before 24. Even Woods couldn’t achieve that feat until 24 years and six months old.

Spieth admitted the career slam, which could be achieved as early as The PGA Championship at Quail Hollow little over a fortnight away in Charlotte, North Carolina, is “a life goal of mine” but isn’t comfortable with the inevitable comparisons with Nicklaus and Woods.

“I feel blessed to be able to play the game I love, but I don’t think that comparisons are — I don’t compare myself. I don’t think that they’re appropriate or necessary,” he said.

“So to be in that company, no doubt is absolutely incredible. And I certainly appreciate it. But I’m very careful as to what that means going forward because what those guys have done has transcended the sport. And in no way, shape or form do I think I’m anywhere near that, whatsoever. So it’s a good start, but there is a long way to go.”

The 146th Open Championship will be etched as the ‘how low can you go’ Open, Branden Grace leading the historically low scoring with the first 62 in the 157 year history of majors. Spieth, up to No.2 in the OWGR, has played just 19 of the 442 majors and has already won three of them, the most recent as only the sixth player to go wire-to-wire. He has enjoyed the lead or the share of it in 14 bigs since 2015, is a combined 67 under par in 45 rounds and tops the rounds in the 60s, rounds of par or better and scoring average categories, the latter a figure now southward of 69.

Just like that moment on the 7th Sunday, he is looking forward to pulling on the reigns to take stock and will get the chance with a fishing trip planned with his father and brother before he plays the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational in Akron, Ohio from August 3-6 ahead of the PGA.

“Growing up playing golf, I just wanted to be able to play in major championships and compete with the best in the world, and things have happened very quickly. And it’s good and bad, because a lot comes with it, a lot more attention… versus just being able to kind of go about your own thing. And I never realised how underrated that was.

“I wanted to be in this position but then, you know, here and there, it becomes harder when it doesn’t go your way. And you’re harder on yourself because you expect so much.

“Therefore, I’m going to thoroughly enjoy this. I look back on 2015 and thought, yeah, I enjoyed it, but I never realised the significance until you kind of hit a low, hit a pitfall, to appreciate the high so much.

“And this is as much of a high as I’ve ever experienced in my golfing life. And I’m going to enjoy it more than I’ve enjoyed anything that I’ve accomplished in the past.”

He wasn’t the only one.

Catch up with the highlights of an enthralling Final Round of The 146th Open. #TheOpen pic.twitter.com/ExeMn2KvTv

— The Open (@TheOpen) July 23, 2017

#TheOpen Shots of the week. So many to choose from! What was your favourite? pic.twitter.com/RwmblgBLEe

— The Open (@TheOpen) July 24, 2017

The post The Open 2017: ‘This is as much of a high as I’ve ever experienced in my golfing life’

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By Ryan Herrington

Cameron McCormick politely excused himself from the gaggle of well-wishers trying to shake his hand beside the 18th green on Sunday at Royal Birkdale. You see his prized pupil, Jordan Spieth, was ushering him over to take his first picture with a certain iconic trophy, and well, you know, that’s kind of a big thing. So big that McCormick pulled out his cellphone and turned on his Facetime app so that friends back in the United States could see him huddle with the new British Open champion for a couple of thrilling moments.

To claim the claret jug and his third career major title, Spieth had to hole a series of momentous putts on the back nine at Birkdale, a succession that will be replayed for years to come. It began with a six-footer for a clutch bogey save on nearly apocalyptic 13th. Followed by a four-foot birdie on the 14th (after nearly holing his tee shot), a 40-foot eagle on the 15th, a 25-foot birdie on the 16th and a six-foot birdie on the 17th. In turn Spieth went from trailing by one stroke to winning by three.

McCormick uses his phone to Facetime friends back home with Spieth and caddie Michael Greller.

] It’s not news that when he’s on, Spieth is world-class with his flat stick. It’s just that he hasn’t been on all that much in 2017. During a season in which his ball-striking has arguably improved to the best it has ever been in his young career (he ranks first on the PGA Tour in strokes gained/approach the green), Spieth’s reliability on the greens has moved in the other direction. His strokes gained/putting ranking was just 36th, compared to second in 2016 and ninth in 2015. And while taking the title at the Travelers Championship three weeks ago, Spieth described it as his first PGA Tour win where he won in spite of his putter.

Enter McCormick. The humble Australian is loath to take credit for the success of any of his students—a group that includes Spieth, So Yeon Ryu, the No. 1 ranked women’s golfer in the world, and newly minted U.S. Junior champ Noah Goodwin. But his work with Spieth in 2017 to rebuild his confidence can’t be understated. When he takes his turn sipping from the jug in the next few days, he’ll have earned the pour.

So what did McCormick do to bring the old Jordan back to life? McCormick insists it wasn’t much beyond getting him to relax and remember the good old days.

“Familiarity with where he’s set up, that’s been the big thing, getting that back,” McCormick said. “It’s one thing to set your putter down and think it’s in the right place, and it’s another thing to look up with your eyes and know it’s in the right place. Even this week there were some questions in his mind. Therefore, my role here was reassurance on the putting green and our practice sessions. Hey, don’t worry about it. Everything is OK. Chill.”

Of course, there was nothing chill about the disaster that appeared to be unfolding on the 13th hole. McCormick watched it all from the comfort of a hospitality stand near the clubhouse. Instead of panic, however, he saw the opportunity that the chaos was presenting, knowing that there was plenty of golf still to play.

“The blessing was that what happened on 13 was such a shock, that it was a good system restart, reboot,” McCormick said. “The 13th was such a kick in the pants that 14 was bound to be a good shot.”

McCormick says this with the benefit of hindsight. But there’s reason he was so certain that Spieth would not implode entirely. Most specifically, he knew how much Spieth loved Birkdale. “He told me on Monday that the course fit his eye right from the start,” he said. “He just loved it. And he and Michael did a fantastic job of breaking down the course, figuring out how to play it under different conditions and different winds. They were ready.”

After watching the Birkdale performance—including the wobbly parts on Sunday—McCormick knows that Spieth’s game is as sharp as it has ever been. But where does it stand in relation to his record-setting year of 2015, when he claimed his first two majors and earned player of the year honors?

McCormick says the barometer remains the Australian Open and the Hero World Challenge at the end of 2014, which produced dominant back-to-back victories that built to his Masters and U.S. Open triumphs the following year.

“That’s the best it’s ever been,” McCormick said, “but it’s pretty darn close right now.”

And McCormick is no small part of that.

The post The Open 2017: How Cameron McCormick got Jordan Spieth to believe he’s a great putter again appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

From the breakfast table to the range, on to the first tee and all the way to the media centre, Jordan Spieth was a man in complete control on the opening day of the 146th Open Championship. So much so he even offered an unprompted assessment of his day before the media were given the chance to ask.

“I give it a nine [out of 10] across the board for everything – tee balls, ball-striking, short game and putting. So things are in check. It’s just about keeping it consistent.”

No one was arguing. A five under-65, blemished only by a short miss for birdie on 18 that would have seen him tie Craig Stadler in 1983 for the lowest first round at Royal Birkdale, earned Spieth a share of the overnight lead alongside U.S. Open champion Brooks Koepka and major-less Matt Kuchar.

With wild weather forecast, the 23-year-old Texan set out Thursday like it was Saturday, figuring he needed to push fast-forward on the traditional moving day. He mightn’t have joined Stadler in the history books but did eclipse his opening 67 at St Andrews in 2015 and, in fact, all 17 of his previous Open rounds. Mission accomplished.

It affords Spieth the breathing space he suspects he might need should the wind (predicted to gust in excess of 35mph) and rain (50% chance at 3pm and 80% at 4pm) arrive as feared.

“Given the forecast coming in, I thought you really needed to be in the red today,” said Spieth, eyeing his 2.48pm (5.48pm UAE time) tee time Friday.

“You can certainly make up ground, in a round like tomorrow, and we’ll see it happen, but being able to kind of play with shots or play a little more conservative, you [can] make a bogey, because you don’t try to do too much on a day like tomorrow, that’s nice and very helpful.”

Spieth will spend Friday morning on the sofa watching the early starters as part of his second round prep. He did so before teeing off in the more difficult conditions Thursday after a breakfast of “eggs and avocado and toast, orange juice, shake”. The dietary questions came after Spieth revealed the his new health kick, saying he is now eating better and giving as good in the gym as he always has on the range.

Is he seeing benefits? You better believe it.

“I feel like I’m more physically fit than I have been, and it’s allowing me to consistently get around my body better. And the mistakes that have come up in pressure situations or just a shot in general that my mind’s off of what I’m trying to do, those are happening less.

“And once you start hitting those shots more consistently, you start even dialling it in more and more. My groupings on iron shots, if I’m with Cameron having a lesson, are tighter than they’ve been in past years, working different ball flights and trajectories. You need to have confidence in each ball flight and trajectory, because you have to hit them all out here in a tournament like this.”

Ominously for the field, Spieth also has his putter going to go with the confidence attained from victory in his last outing at The Travelers Championship.

“I was very close at the U.S. Open and very close at the Masters. The Masters, I got off to a really poor start the first day and played pretty well after. But the U.S. Open it was everything but the putter. I was in a good enough position to really do something special there the first couple of rounds of the U.S. Open and just didn’t get anything to go.

“I’ve been putting in a lot of work with the putting and trying to get it back to the confidence that I’ve had the last couple of years. It’s just been the one thing that’s been off this year. My ball-striking has been better in any years that I’ve ever played golf.

“It’s been about capitalising, which is frustrating, considering I’m used to seeing the ball go in. And then I’m hitting it in tighter but it hasn’t been going in. But then we won. Three weeks ago, and then I had some rest. So I feel rested and confident, which is a good feeling. It’s tough to have that feeling this late in the season. I thought that was an important break for me.”

The day began with two new habits on the range, the first some track man number crunching with his instructor, Cameron McCormick, to assist Spieth’s club selection in the “heavy [cross] winds” The second could very well turn into a superstition after McCormick offered him a stick of gum.

For some reason, he took it. “I was one under through two, and I thought I better keep it in and it’s still in now,” Spieth said. “It’s probably about time for a new piece.”

After missing but three greens and holing three of his five birdie putts from outside 10 feet, it was no surprise the mint stayed in.

“I’d call it a top five probably, major round that I’ve played, maybe fifth or sixth, something like that,” Spieth said. “I couldn’t have done much better than that today.”

Come Sunday, Spieth might well need to reassess the importance of his 67 as well as a steady supply of minty freshness.

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 with 9 out of 10 self assessment appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.