Jordan Spieth has made 297 career PGA Tour starts.
On Thursday, he withdrew mid-tournament for the first time.
Spieth injured his neck while warming up on the range prior to Thursday’s opening round of the Travelers Championship. He opted to play through the injury, going 5 over through his first 12 holes.
But Spieth could be heard grunting in noticeable pain after his tee shot on the par-5 13th hole. And after his second shot from the left fairway shot out right, getting just 16 feet off the ground before finding another bunker, Spieth said to his caddie, Michael Greller, “I’m done. Can’t do it. I’m sorry.”
Spieth then called a rules official, unsure of the protocol for withdrawing.
“How’s this work?” Spieth asked the official. “I’ve never done this.”
Spieth handed his playing competitor, Luke Clanton, his scorecard before hopping on a golf cart to get shuttled back to the clubhouse, where he answered a few questions for reporters.
“It was just like midway through on my irons,” Spieth said of when the injury occured. “Everything was great in my gym session, and I’ve been very, very excited to go out and play. Things have been getting better and better, and then my right scap just kind of locked, like tightened midway through the warm-up, and I just kept hitting, and then all of a sudden it was moving up ... and then it was over the left and then it was like everything, so I stopped. It was both sides of my neck and upper back.”
Ending his warm-up about 30 minutes early, Spieth headed straight to his physio, Marnus Marais, who also works on Scottie Scheffler and Justin Thomas, among others. He didn’t know how he suffered the injury, other than speculating that he may have slept on it wrong.
“I was just going to try to see if I could somehow get through at even,” Spieth added. “It’s a weird situation with an elevated event and no cut and important points and stuff. It’s like, well, what’s the downside if I can finish of just finishing even if it’s ugly, and then I hit my tee shot on 13, and it legitimately really hurt. I was walking off that tee, and I’m like, if it’s even harder to turn, then I’m not going to be able to make a backswing that’s even useful, and that’s what happened on the bunker shot. I was like, it’s only going to get worse to finish the round, and it’s not worth it. I thought that was the time.
“I’ve never withdrawn from an event ever anywhere at any level, so I didn’t really know what to do. It just became too much.”
By withdrawing, Spieth will receive last-place money in the limited-field, signature event, but he will not get any FedExCup points.
Spieth, who missed the first month of the season while recovering from left-wrist surgery last August, is currently ranked 37th in points. He has four top-10s in 15 starts and was coming off a T-23 at the U.S. Open last week. This was his 10th tournament in the past 12 weeks.
He and his wife, Annie, are expecting their third child within the next few weeks.
“I’ll have some time off now, obviously, to get healthy, but hopefully after a few days I go through the right process to just get right back to where I was,” Spieth said. “Yeah, it’s a bummer. It’s a bummer at this event, obviously.”