Jordan Spieth’s ‘Wild Players’ round left him with a nagging, pleasant feeling

Jordan Spieth’s second round at Players Championship it was vintage Jordan Spieth.

Among his seven birds were several doozies. On his tee shot on 18, his ninth hole of the day, he hit a tree to the right, but the ball bounced back into the fairway. He continued to make 3. On the par-5 2nd, he walked his toe and missed the fairway. He three-putted and chipped in a 49-footer for another birdie.

On the par-4 6th, he played “weird golf” but still made par from the front of the green. On No. 3, he missed a four-footer for birdie.

So yeah, typical Spieth stuff.

What remained was the last hole. When Spieth reached the par-5 9th, he was six under for the round and four shots back of the lead. He hit his T-shirt and was shot into the tree and had to be punched out. Trying to drive it home, Spieth pulled his third shot from the middle of the fairway left and called for a provisional. “I don’t know what’s in there,” Spieth told caddy Michael Greller. “I know it’s the driving range.” He found the ball behind a tree and eventually made off with a mat.

A day full of birds ended with three-time major winner leaving the course with a very similar feeling: fear of how it ended.

“It was just a problem, both days ended in double. I played better than that,” Spieth said after his round. “I’ve been playing really well, trying to let the course come to me. You don’t have to force anything. It’s not there yet, but it’s like close enough to where I can do what I did today for a while. So it just stinks, because to end up like that, I would have — some days you wonder if you shot a worse shot, but you ended up with a birdie, it would have been a much happier game.”

This frustration is part of golf – a crazy and imperfect game played by gluttons for punishment. But there’s no doubt that Spieth’s anxiety also had to do with the environment.

For the past decade, Pete Dye’s stadium course has given Spieth fits. In his last 10 majors, Spieth has missed six cuts and has just one top-20 finish. He’s trying to approach it differently this year. This has been successful at times, but he still finds himself unable to avoid the occasional Sawgrass landmine he found on each of his final holes in Rounds 1 and 2. That would make Dye smile.

“This place has gotten the best of me in the past and I’ve let it get the best of me a few times this week,” Spieth said. “It cost me maybe four shots, so hopefully it’s not too much to make up for. But things are really good, and I’ve got to have more of that kind of patience here than in other places, and just 13 times in a row I’m still just — something gets me here and I just don’t have the patience for it.”

Patience will be the final piece of the puzzle that allows Spieth to finally conquer his Sawgrass demons. He hasn’t found it yet, but everything else is in place for Spieth to find the answers that have eluded him for a decade in the PGA Tour’s main event.

Through two rounds at TPC Sawgrass, Spieth, who as of this writing was seven off the lead, ranks 10th in Strokes Gained: Approach and Around the Green. He’s missing a shot off the tee and is a bit negative on the greens. However, Spieth drove the ball better on Friday. He paired five straight birdies with moments of wild, erratic golf. It all added up to a four-under 68 and a chance to contend at Sawgrass for the first time since his only top-10 finish, which was a T4 in 2014.

All of this is proof that Spieth is close to being the Spieth of old, or at least the best version of this current iteration of Spieth.

“I’m doing all right,” he said. “Statistics don’t necessarily tell exactly how consistent things are. I feel like I’ve taken a lot of shots especially close-ups the last two weeks where I’m posing, saying, man, I did my job, and then I’m shocked at where they end up, short or long or whatever.”

Spieth barely thinks about the wrist he had surgery on after the 2024 season. He believes he has the “gun” back. on the greens and is close to putting it all together. As he rolled through the middle of Friday’s round, Spieth felt it. The hole looked big, the irons were cracked, he was surviving the “weird golf” moments and the jumps were going his way.

But as most golfers know, all that matters is the last swing, the final hole. It carries more weight than the rest.

When asked if he would be able to play the closing double and focus on the positives, Spieth said: “Never. Have you ever played golf?”

“I didn’t feel like I made a lot of mistakes, so in that sense it wasn’t like I made a decision error. It was execution. I can swallow it a lot easier.”

The seven birdies, a tee weekend at the Players and the feeling that his best is in his hand should help, but that double will remain in the back of his mind until Spieth puts it up on Saturday afternoon.

This is the deal that all golfers make. It’s a bargain Jordan Spieth will once again make on Saturday at TPC Sawgrass, hoping this time he’ll have the patience to find all the answers to Dye’s demanding test.