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.”

The post Jordan Spieth opens up about the hand injury that derailed his game appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Christopher Powers
Last month at the Players Championship, Golf Channel’s Ryan Lavner was the first to report that Brooks Koepka didn’t exactly look or feel like his old self. Koepka, who had just won a pair of majors over the summer to bring his career tally to three, had intentionally lost 24 pounds since November, but he wouldn’t say why, instead offering a “you’ll see” to Lavner as if we’d all soon find out.

We’ve still yet to find out why Koepka made the sudden change, a move that could understandably be seen as an odd one with Koepka in the prime of his career. Not to mention that he seemed like he was in pretty great shape already, so why would he need to make such a drastic switch? There was speculation that it could be for ESPN’s Body Issue, or something similar, but that was never confirmed. “I just want to be able to eat again,” said Koepka, who had lost over 10 yards off the tee in his lighter phase.

During his Tuesday Masters press conference, the two-time U.S. Open winner changed his tune from the weight loss being “intentional,” to him just having “a bunch of blood work and trying to figure out what was going on.”

“The diet I was on was probably not the best. I was like 1,800 calories a day,” said Koepka. “I mean, you’re not going to be in the best physical shape at that point. You look at somebody like Michael Phelps or somebody like that eating 6,000 or 7,000 calories by lunchtime. But I wanted to do it and try to lose some weight, and maybe went about it a little too aggressively for just a long period of time and the intensity of what I was doing.”

Even with these comments, it’s still not clear why he dropped the weight. This was a player coming off a career year that appeared to be in better shape than anyone on tour and he decided to completely change his entire body.

Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee is as perplexed by Koepka’s decision as anyone, and he dropped one of his usual, scorching-hot takes about it on Tuesday night at Augusta National. Here’s what Chamblee had to say when the Koepka topic came up on Golf Channel’s “Live From The Masters”:

“The three times he’s played here he’s finished 33rd, 21st and 11th, that’s a pretty darn good trend,” said Chamblee, before setting off every fire alarm on the property. “We know why he didn’t play last year, we know what he did at the end of last year, you can extrapolate what he did at the end of last year and what he was likely to do here at Augusta National if everything were the same. Now, for him to change his body and his body chemistry, for vanity reasons, for a vanity shoot, is the most reckless self-sabotage that I have ever seen of an athlete in his prime.

“I get why they ask Gary Player to do that shoot. I get why they ask Greg Norman to do that shoot. But to do something that takes you out of your game, to change your game completely, it’s never worked out very well. I think he’d be at the top of everybody’s list to win at Augusta National had he not done this and had his game not declined.”

Everybody wants to bring their A game for Masters week, and, apparently, that’s not limited to those actually competing in the event. Chamblee always brings the heat, but he clearly knows it’s a major championship week with this one. Call it a hot take all you want (he is speculating about the “vanity shoot” part), but there is a hint of truth to what he said. We’ll see if Koepka catches wind of it and uses it as fuel as he often likes to do starting on Thursday.

The post Masters 2019: Brandel Chamblee calls Brooks Koepka’s weight loss “the most reckless self sabotage that I have ever seen of an athlete in his prime” appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.