CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Now that Rory McIlroy has closed the deal, there are only two active players who even have a chance at a career grand slam right now. Phil Mickelson will get his turn in the “When’s it going to happen?” spotlight at the U.S. Open next month, but Jordan Spieth — who only needs a PGA Championship victory to close out his quartet — is the center of grand slam attention this week.
“It’s always circled on the calendar,” Spieth said at Quail Hollow early Tuesday morning, in the first of the week’s interview slots. “For me, if I could only win one tournament for the rest of my life, I’d pick this one for that reason.”
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For a time there in the mid-2010s, it appeared Spieth was going to win a whole lot of tournaments over the rest of his career. He snared a Masters and a U.S. Open over a two-month stretch in 2015, and added an Open Championship two years later. He wasn’t even 24 years old. A career grand slam seemed more of a “when” than an “if.”
Since then, though, Spieth’s form has fallen off a cliff not unlike the Pebble Beach one he stood over in 2022:
He’s won just twice anywhere since that 2017 Open victory. In the decade of the 2020s, Spieth has posted just three top-five finishes in majors. He’s particularly struggled at the PGA, with no finish higher than T29, and to him, that’s not a surprise.
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“The Masters and The Open play a lot more into my strengths than the other two do,” he said, smiling at the fact that he “snuck [the U.S. Open] out on a course (Chambers Bay) that’s not a normal U.S. Open golf course.”
He’s not ready to consider himself a favorite this week, and neither are the books, which currently have him at 60-1 odds to win. But he feels like he’s trending in the right direction, with a string of April top-20 finishes — including a T14 at the Masters — and a solo fourth-place finish earlier this month at the CJ Cup Byron Nelson. Plus, he feels like he’s in a better position off the tee now than he was even in his prime.
“I think I’m in a position now, just because I have faster ball speed than I did back then by a significant amount,” he said. “It was really just kind of the driving statistic that you need at U.S. Opens and PGAs that would have held me back.”
The statistics back him up; in the 2015-16 season, unequivocally his best, he ranked 5th in overall strokes gained but 71st in total driving. This year, through 38 rounds, he ranks 19th in strokes gained and 32nd in total driving, and he ranked 10th in the same category last season. Between the newly reliable driver and course familiarity — Quail Hollow is a regular Tour stop — Spieth feels a bit more at ease this week than he might otherwise.
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“You’ve got to go out and execute, but a familiar golf course is nice,” he said. “I don’t feel like I have to learn where all the pins are and where all the misses are and stuff. You can ask me the hole location on any green around this place right now, and I can tell you how I’m going to play the hole and where I’m going to try to hit it.”
Most notably, Spieth is coming off an August surgery on his left wrist to address an issue that had lingered since May 2023. So far, the signs have been positive, though there are definitely reminders.
“When I’m golfing, I haven’t really been thinking about it the last couple of months,” he said. “I wake up in the morning, I’m very aware I had surgery. My left (wrist) feels twice the size of my right for about a half hour every morning. They say that stops about a year post-op. … Some days are better than others. I haven’t exactly given it a lot of rest in the last few months.”
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Spieth speaks with the old familiar mid-2010s honesty, if not the mid-2010s results. It’s a long way from Tuesday morning to Sunday afternoon at Quail Hollow, but Spieth seems to believe that there’s a larger goal in mind post-surgery.
“I didn’t expect this year to be a ridiculous year,” he said. “It’s going to be something that I (need) to work slowly towards with a long-term outlook, and I think it’s going really well so far. I’ve got a big stretch and a lot of good opportunities coming up, and a lot less distractions on it than I had last year.”
Spieth will resume his pursuit of a career grand slam on Thursday at Quail Hollow.
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