Jordan Spieth ready for a bounceback season in 2019
It’s been a year to forget for Jordan Spieth, but since we’re not Jordan Spieth, let’s run down the ways that golf has gone somewhat sideways for the former world No. 1.
He hasn’t won since the 2017 British Open, that magnificent victory over Matt Kuchar that seems like a thousand years ago. He missed out on the FedEx Cup playoffs, placing 31st when he needed to get into the top 30. He became the centerpiece of a Ryder Cup controversy when reports suggested he didn’t want to play with Patrick Reed any longer. And amid all this, he got popped by the PGA Tour for failing to play enough tournaments last season. Not a great run.
“It was a building year,” Spieth said prior to this week’s Shriner’s Open, his first event of the 2018-19 season. “I look back at last year as something that I think will be beneficial for me in the long run. I really believe that. I know that’s an easy thing to say looking at kind of the positive in a negative, but there were tangible, mechanical things that I needed to address, and I was able to throughout the season.”
Fatigue did Spieth in
Spieth cited fatigue, playing seven events in nine weeks, as a primary culprit in his struggles. “Unfortunately, I had to play so much … towards the end [of the season] that I couldn’t really get [his game] intact,” he said. “So I stepped on the first tee knowing that I was playing a C-game instead of figuring where my game is at through the first couple rounds.”
Yeah, yeah, too much golf, rough life, right? Spieth tried to put it in context: “When you’re just grinding mentally to try and figure out what it is and then physically putting in those hours, it became too difficult to turn it around for me,” he said. “I was kind of getting in my own head in a sense.”
Spieth on Tiger Woods
Naturally, he talked Tiger Woods, specifically in the ways that every golfer must at some point face up to the comparisons with 2000-era Woods. “Everybody was blessed with the dominance of what Tiger was able to do year in and year out, and really the society and the sports world in general,” he said. “Now with the improved access that any person has via social media to an athlete, if you fall into that comparison talk it only hurts you … People getting very caught up in a ‘[what] have you done for me lately’ and ‘your last tournament …’ perspective. I’ll be honest, for a little while that kind of stuff got to me.”
Spieth tees off Thursday at TPC Summerlin in Las Vegas.
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter or on Facebook.
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