PALM BEACH GARDENS — Jordan Spieth’s only trip around the demanding Champion Course at PGA National was 16 years ago for a junior golf tournament. Otherwise, he’s unfamiliar with a part of the country he calls the “Professional Men’s Golf Mecca.”
So when the three-time major winner from Dallas was looking to escape 30-degree weather and give his surgically repaired left wrist another test, he called his coach to inquire about making his Cognizant Classic in the Palm Beaches debut.
Spieth, 31, asked Cameron McCormack how his game fit the course.
“He goes, ‘I think it’s a great fit,’ ” Spieth said Tuesday, about 12 hours after arriving in “golf’s mecca.” “You’ve got to drive the ball, obviously, precise, but tough golf course in the wind. Bermuda (grass), that’s kind of what I grew up on.
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“He thought it was a really good fit, so it all came together in 12 hours, essentially.”
Spieth, who has entered three events in the last six months, was packing for sunny, South Florida, for his first crack at the Champ since he was eliminated in the semifinal of the 2009 Polo Golf Junior Classic.
“I remember playing it because it’s a bear of a golf course for teenagers,” Spieth said, pun intended … we think.
A bear for teenagers and adults … including professional golfers.
Spieth, 31, is here for two reasons: The wrist injury impacted his 2024 season, preventing him from qualifying for the 2025 signature events, and he needs the reps.
So he picked the tournament he admits “I never even looked at,” mainly because of where it fell in the schedule.
“I also am playing a bit of catch-up … and South Florida sounds nice,” he said.
Jordan Spieth adds star-power to any field
Jordan Spieth is one of those players who brings star-power to a field whether he’s No. 1 in the world — as he was for 26 weeks in 2015 and 2016 — or his current ranking, No. 70.
Spieth isn’t a stranger to falling out of the top 50. He spent several weeks in the vicinity during his well-documented, long-term slump that started after he won 10 events during a three year stretch starting with the 2014-15 season.
With his game in recovery, he got back into the top 10 in mid-2023, but started to slip again after first injuring his wrist May of that year.
Spieth tore a sheath that holds the tendon in place but was told ice and tape was all it needed. He then dislocated the same wrist in the fall of 2023 calling it “random” and a “non-contact injury.”
Soon after, the wrist would randomly pop out and he would just pop it back in.
“I started being able to just click it back in on command, and that’s not a good thing,” he said. “I would hold it down here and just shake, and it would go from not being able to turn my hand to I could hit driver at full speed. It was a very weird deal.”
Weird enough that after the St. Jude Championship in August, he decided to get it fixed, undergoing surgery to repair the tendon.
Make sure he did not return to PGA Tour too early
Spieth said one of the best pieces of advice he received post surgery was: “No one’s ever come back too late from a surgery.”
He said he took that to heart.
And while the initial inactivity wasn’t difficult knowing he would need time to heal, after about 16 weeks he got antsy. What helped was by then the Tour had wound down, being the fall, and he wasn’t being bombarded with golf tournaments.
Spieth’s first event after surgery was at the Pebble Beach Pro-Am one month ago. He tied for 69th. He then defied all expectations with a T4 at Phoenix before missing the cut at Genesis two weeks ago.
“I started out as, maybe, a low- to mid-single digit handicapper as I came back,” he said. “I needed to work my way about 15 shots better by the time I were to play a tournament. That didn’t quite happen, but then it got better as the stretch went on.”
Now, some days are better than others. The wrist aches every day when he wakes up but it gets better by the time he’s hitting golf balls. And he believes that could linger for about another six months before he is completely healed.
He’s not sure how it will react once he starts loading up his schedule. As for the immediate future, he knows he’s in The Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass in two weeks, but he is not sure about the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill next week. He could get in through the Cognizant Classic or a sponsors exemption.
“If I need to stop, I’ll stop for a little bit,” he said. “I just feel like it’s power through. I’m not in pain, it just gets tight.”
As for navigating the Champion Course and, for that matter, the area, Spieth has some help. Two of his closest friends, Justin Thomas and Rickie Fowler, live in northern Palm Beach County.
“I’ve just not spent much time in this area at all, which is very surprising because it’s such a professional men’s golf mecca between all the guys that live here, all the great golf courses, obviously this tournament,” he said. “So you have everything here.”
Tom D’Angelo is a senior sports columnist and reporter for The Palm Beach Post. He can be reached at [email protected].
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This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: PGA Tour Cognizant Classic provides Jordan Spieth another test for wrist
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