NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. – Here we go again for Jordan Spieth, who for the 10th time will tee it up at the PGA Championship trying to complete the fourth and final leg of the career Grand Slam.
His now decade-long pursuit to become just the seventh player in history to win every major doesn’t carry quite the same furor as it once did. Part of that is the golf landscape; Rory McIlroy finally knocked off the Masters a year ago and dominant world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler is looking to etch his place in history next month at Shinnecock. And some of that, surely, is Spieth himself. Now 32 years old, he has just two wins – total – since 2017.
“This tournament is always highlighted,” Spieth said Monday at Aronimink. “If I can win one more tournament in my life, it would obviously be this one for that reason. But the easiest way to do that is to not try to, in a weird way.”
Since his slam focus was narrowed, Spieth has had scant success in the PGA. He has posted just a single top-10 in nine prior appearances: a tie for third in 2019, when he was never seriously in contention with Brooks Koepka lapping the field at Bethpage. In his last five PGA starts, since emerging from a mid-career slump, he has finished no better than 29th.
If Spieth were to capture the final leg this week, his 10 attempts would be the second-most all time, behind only McIlroy’s 11.
“Obviously with having won the other three, that’s the one that everyone focuses on,” Spieth said. “But when I’m out here, and certainly when I get out on the golf course, I’ve been in contention a couple of times in this tournament – it didn’t feel any different than any other majors, so I wouldn’t expect to if I get there this week.”
The priority right now for Spieth is wringing the most he can out of his game. For months, he has stressed to anyone that’ll listen that he’s close to playing great golf again – that he’s just struggling to score, or to put four tidy rounds together. At Pebble, TPC Sawgrass, Augusta and Doral, he was undone by off days with his ball-striking or putter, sometimes in consecutive rounds. Though his overall statistical profile is unspectacular – 46th in strokes gained: total – at multiple tournaments this year he has proven capable of pacing the field in any particular category.
“I should be confident that I have at least each part of the game as a weapon,” he said.
Spieth recently equated the slow burn of his game to the process of smoking meat – that he can, say, push the internal temperature of a chicken up to 155 degrees rather quickly, but sometimes the process stalls and it takes a while to creep up the last few degrees to ensure it’s safe to eat.
“It’s close. It’s matching what I want to do. It feels good and it’s producing the right stuff,” he said. “It’s just not quite consistent enough yet to be able to be contending week-in and week-out.”
