Jordan Spieth headed to Quail Hollow for the PGA Championship with more expectations than pressure for being next in line to join the most elite fraternity in golf with the career Grand Slam. Only the Wanamaker Trophy was missing.
That was eight years ago. He tied for 28th.
“I really had no reason not to have had a better chance,” Spieth said as he tried to recall the 2017 PGA Championship. He was fresh off his astonishing birdie-eagle-birdie-birdie-par finish to win the British Open at Royal Birkdale, the third leg of the Grand Slam.
Spieth had said going into that PGA, “If I don’t win one in the next 10 years, then maybe there’s added pressure. And hopefully, we don’t have to have this conversation in 10 years.”
It's getting close to that. He tries for the ninth time when the PGA Championship returns to Quail Hollow on May 15-18. If there are renewed expectations, they come from Rory McIlroy getting the final piece of his Grand Slam puzzle with a dream win at the Masters.
Now the attention falls to Spieth, although there are glaring differences, particularly their form. McIlroy had already won Pebble Beach and The Players Championship this year going into the Masters. Spieth hasn't won in more than three years.
Not many doubt Spieth is capable. He shot 62 in the final round of the CJ Cup Byron Nelson, enough to ask if golf could get another career slam in a span of 35 days.
“Odds would say he's good enough to do it,” Scottie Scheffler said.
Spieth, however, is only six months removed from surgery on a left wrist he believes first was injured toward the end of 2017 and the start of 2018.
As much as he has talked about this being a fresh start, and a 10-year outlook for what he wants to achieve, he can't help but look back and wonder how differently his career could have gone if he had taken care of his wrist sooner.
“If I’m really feeling petty about myself, I lost six years because of this,” he said. “I can remember specific lessons where my grip got too weak and I couldn’t strengthen it by the time I got to a 4-iron. ... And then I started getting into really bad habits just to make up for an open face. And never fixed it until the end of ’20 and beginning of ’21.”
But the pain never went away. The tendon that connects the forearm to the wrist would pop out, first a week before the 2023 PGA Championship, even during the final round of the British Open last year at Royal Troon. That's when he realized surgery was his best option.
“I look back at that and say, ‘If I did something right away, I think last year looks a lot different,’” Spieth said.
As much as he wants to move forward, the past is where Spieth needs to look to rebuild the swing that took him to No. 1 in the world and three majors before his 24th birthday. The past also tempts to remember how good it was.
“Yeah, I've lived that way before and it doesn't help,” Spieth said. “I bounce around back a little bit, like ‘What if I had just got on top of it back then? What could have happened?’ Really, in ‘19 and ’20, I was living in the past every day.”
That wouldn't seem to help.
“Not at 25 years old,” he said. “It's not really healthy.”
He has talked about giving himself grace in his return to golf after being out six months from the August surgery. He is writing in a journal, his thoughts mainly about gratitude to be playing again. But then he gets into competitive mode and finds himself in a hurry to have everything the way it once was.
Ten years ago, he won the Masters and U.S. Open, and he was tied for the lead in the British Open when he missed a 5-foot par putt on the 17th hole at St. Andrews. He missed the playoff by one shot, and a month later was runner-up to Jason Day in the PGA Championship.
He was three shots away from a shot at the Grand Slam. Jack Nicklaus in 1975 was the only other player that close (aggregate score) in the four majors.
“Let’s not forget when he won all the majors and all the tournaments at such a young age, they came so quickly,” Curtis Strange said. “Can you sustain that over the next eight or ten years. He didn’t. One was because of some injuries. But his ball striking ... just look at the stats. His ball striking is not near what Scottie Scheffler’s is. What does he have to do? He has to chip and putt like we know Jordan can, and sometimes that doesn’t happen every single day.”
Spieth was 22 during that dream season in 2015, which ended with him winning the FedEx Cup. Now he is married, the father of two, another on the way this summer.
How does he convince himself his best golf is ahead when the past includes a season that only comes along once in a career for anyone not named Nicklaus or Tiger Woods.
“My situation is a really interesting one,” Spieth said. “You want to be as present as possible, and in my situation it’s a really hard thing to do. Because I’m trying to live a little bit in the past, but I’m also trying to satisfy the future for the past, for whatever length of time I have left playing at a high level."
Spieth played in the final group on Saturday of the 2019 PGA Championship at Bethpage Black. He was seven shots behind and had no idea where the ball was going unless he had a putter in his hands. He tied for fourth, six shots behind. That was his best finish in the PGA with the Grand Slam at stake and it was never close.
As tough as it was for McIlroy to finally win the Masters, he doesn’t see it much easier for Spieth in the PGA Championship.
“You have to go back to the same tournament every year for Jordan, but not the same golf course,” McIlroy said. “It’s a bit of a different proposition for him rather than me having to go back to the same venue every year.”
What doesn’t change are the stakes. McIlroy now can speak from experience.
“You know that you’re not just trying to win another tournament, you’re trying to become part of history, and that has a certain weight to it,” McIlroy said. “I’ve certainly felt that at Augusta over the years. I’m sure Jordan has felt that a bit going into each PGA that he’s had a chance to do the same thing.”
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