PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — When it comes to Jordan Spieth at Pebble Beach, it can be easy to forget that some things are a matter of life and death.
Like, for example, the strangest swing thought of his high-octane professional career, which arrived on the cliff overhanging the 8th hole at Pebble Beach in 2022.
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“Let’s not shift our weight forward or we might die,” Spieth said with a chuckle, recalling the cliff scene from ’22 on Thursday. “That’s probably the weirdest [swing thought] I’ve ever had.”
Thankfully, 2026’s visit to Monterey Peninsula has proved at least slightly less death-defying. The three-time major champ ended Thursday’s opening round at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am at 6 under, good for T11 in a loaded Signature Event field, the strongest signal of his 2026 season to date. As is tradition, Spieth’s opening round was filled with at least a little adrenaline — he dunked his approach shot on the 18th hole (his ninth of the day) for an eagle 2.
But as it turns out, the hole-out was far from the most excitement Spieth faced in the early stages of the action from Pebble Beach. In fact, it paled in comparison to the … unusual swing obstacle he was forced to work through in the lead-up to the tournament: Himself.
“I got in a bad kind of mental place Friday,” Spieth said, referring to the second-round 75 that ended his week at the WM Phoenix Open prematurely with a missed cut. “I was swinging it well and I decided to tell myself I wasn’t. I just had a bad day.”
If you’re flinching as you read those words, you’re not alone. The golf world has squinted hard to find signs of a comeback from Spieth in recent years, as golf’s one-time golden child has aged into a frustrating prime. Spieth, who is currently ranked 89th in the world, has dealt with both injury and mental obstacles in the nine years following his last major win at the 2017 Open Championship. He has tried reset after reset during that time — most recently undergoing surgery to correct a wrist tendon issue that had plagued him for years last offseason — to little progress.
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But there have been signs of life. Spieth’s wrist took a while, but now he says it’s fully healed, giving him range of motion and, critically, pain-free golf for the first time in a long while. His swing is returning to the feeling that helped jumpstart one of the most thrilling three-year stretches of golf in recent memory.
Under these auspices, Friday’s hiccup at the WM Phoenix Open is concerning, but not disqualifying.
“Things are better than what they seem there,” Spieth said. “That was just kind of a strange deal. I came up here, I played a fun round with my brother on Sunday morning at Pebble. I hit a few balls Saturday when we got in. But I played Pebble and Cypress in the same day, Sunday. Just had a fun day. Played a loop, we didn’t play them all. Then just once Monday hit, it was just get prepared for a normal week and just throw it out the window.”
Spieth did a good job of wiping the slate clean on Thursday at Spyglass Hill — recording four birdies, the aforementioned eagle and no bogeys. The boredom on his scorecard arrived thanks to a vintage performance around the greens, where Spieth finished a perfect seven for seven scrambling.
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Thursday’s performance wasn’t enough to fully erase the bad taste from last Friday — but it was enough to water it down. There’s a little bit of reverse psychology at play there: Spieth has historically played well in Phoenix before faltering — maybe now, after the MC, he can flip the script.
“I mean, it was just an off day and a week that is typically a really good one for me,” Spieth said. “The last five [or] six years Phoenix has been a big springboard for me, and I thought, ‘let’s just forget about it and use this as our pseudo-Phoenix and try to get dialed in.’”
Again, it’s not as if Spieth is a stranger to these kinds of prevarications. He is perhaps the most compelling golfer alive, and his vacillations between brilliance and disaster are a big part of the reason why. The dark moments seem … very dark. But they never seem to hang around.
“I just thought I had a fluke kind of crappy day,” Spieth said. “I woke up on the wrong side of the bed last Friday.”
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That is, after all, the nice part about life and death with Jordan Spieth: He might stare over the edge of the cliff — but he won’t stay there.
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