SOUTHPORT, England – Jordan Spieth returned to Royal Birkdale on Sunday, site of his last major championship victory in 2017, and the par-3 hole where he stiffed a 6-iron and the green where he holed a 60-foot eagle putt are nowhere to be found after changes to the course.
“Maybe the best shot and the best putt I’ve ever hit don’t exist anymore,” he said on Monday during his pre-championship press conference. “Hope to create some more great memories here.”
Jordan Spieth on the driving range during a practice round for The Open Championship golf tournament at Royal Birkdale.
Nine years ago en route to winning his third career major championship, Spieth made one of the great bogeys in major championship history at the par-4 13th hole after fanning his tee shot off to the right and hitting a spectator in the head. He took an unplayable and then nearly half an hour to determine sight-of-line relief that allowed him to drop on the driving range, hit a 3-iron back into play and salvage a remarkable bogey with an up and down.
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“It’s come up probably more than any other hole I’ve ever played,” Spieth said. “I remember getting the most out of it and making a bogey there and feeling like I stole a shot back somehow.”
Spieth, who has loved links golf since his first trip to England at age 14, played a practice round at Birkdale on Sunday and nine holes on Monday. What was it like to stand on that tee again? “Some stuff really hit the fan last time I was standing on this tee from here on in,” he answered. “It was the start of a crazy six-hole stretch, but I was like driver, 2-iron the last two days. It’s a completely different hole. You’re trying to hit it down the left side instead of the right.”
After Spieth made a miraculous bogey at 13, he rifled his tee shot at the par-3 14th to 3 feet to regain a share of the lead.
“I stepped up and hit just a dead-straight rocket that almost went in and kind of took back control of the championship,” he recalled. “That was probably the best shot – it was a hold 6-iron, just a little wind off the right, just starting to rain a little, and I just lined up right at the pin.”
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Having regained momentum, he applied a knockout punch at the par-5 15th, which is now the 14th hole on the course. When he drained the long-range bomb for eagle, he pointed to his caddie, Michael Greller, and said, “Go get that.” In the gym that week, Spieth happened to see the re-airing of old Open Championships playing on a TV and it may have had something to do with his memorable reaction to sinking the putt.
“Back in the ‘70s these guys never got their balls out of the hole. They’d make a putt, their caddies would pull the pin out just in time for it to go in, and then they would pick it out of the hole,” Spieth recalled in an interview earlier this year with Golf magazine. “So that was in my head, my subconscious. Also, the [next] tee was, like, 50 feet in the other way. I would have been going out of my way to go get [the ball]. That’s how ‘Go get that’ happened…It was a throwback move.”
Jordan Spieth is congratulated for his victory at the 2017 Open on the famed yellow leaderboard at 18.
It has become part of the golf vernacular as well as a meme and Spieth said both he and his friends back home in Dallas aren’t shy about using the line he made famous.
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“I think I used it once this year, which ironically I came in 50th in the tournament, so it didn’t really mean as much,” he said. “I made an eagle putt on 7 of Quail Hollow (at the Truist Championship), and it took me from 48th to 44th at the time probably. It’s not quite the same meaning, but it was just kind of funny.”
Since that victory nine years ago at Birkdale, Spieth has only won two more PGA Tour events and none since the RBC Heritage four years. He hasn’t notched a top-10 finish in more than a year. His game hasn’t matched up to the form that allowed him to join Jack Nicklaus as the only player to win three majors before the age of 24. But Spieth remains convinced that there is another stretch of winning form ahead for him. Asked if his game peaked early, he replied, “No, I’ll never believe that until I’m at a point in my career where my health or whatever would be that because, I mean, if you give up on reaching your ceiling then I don’t see a point in playing anymore.
As Spieth pointed out, he’s just 32 years old and Phil Mickelson hadn’t won his first major at that age yet but would go on to claim six. Spieth refuses to hit the panic button even as the golf world anxiously waits for him to rediscover his major mojo again.
“Knowing me, when the lid pops off the hole, I feel like I can go on a run about as hot as anybody can run,” he said. “So I’m just waiting for that opportunity.”
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Despite winless patch, Jordan Spieth still believes his best is yet to come
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