Jason Day concerned Jordan Spieth in danger of burnout
Jason Day is concerned about Jordan Spieth.
The reigning PGA champion wonders if the world No. 1 has stretched himself too thin and traveled too many miles at the start of the golf season and where that might all leave Spieth heading into the Masters and the concentrated Olympic summer ahead.
“I'm worried about him because I don't know if he's playing too much and he's doing too many things with golf and sponsor obligations that he might make – may get burned out and go through a rut where he doesn't want to be on the golf course for awhile,” Day said Tuesday ahead of the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill in Orlando. “Everyone goes through that.”
Back in November 2015, Spieth started on a run in which he played six tournaments in six different countries, going from China to Australia to the Bahamas to the United States (Hawaii, to be specific) to the United Arab Emirates to Singapore. He won one of those events and finished well enough in the others, but the globetrotting left him visibly tired, a fact Spieth acknowledged and said he likely wouldn't do again.
Since coming back to the States from Singapore, Spieth has struggled on the PGA Tour. At Pebble Beach, he suggested he wasn't preparing for tournaments as he had earlier in his career, perhaps mistakenly assuming every week could be like the one he had at the Hyundai Tournament of Champions, which he won by a comfortable eight shots. In two of his last three tournaments, Spieth has opened with round in the high 70s.
Spieth also hasn't shied away from embracing a role as ambassador for the game. Point of fact, Spieth went on a media tour in New York on Monday with LPGA star Lexi Thompson to promote the Drive, Chip and Putt contest.
The reigning Masters champion will play in his home state in the next two weeks, in his college town of Austin for the WGC-Dell Match Play, then in the Shell Houston Open, in which he lost to J.B. Holmes in a playoff last year.
So is Spieth playing too much? Not really. While there are more miles between stops, Spieth will play nine times worldwide in 2016 before the Masters. Last year, he played eight times.
Ryan Ballengee is a Yahoo Sports contributor. Find him on Facebook and Twitter.
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