‘I made a step in the right direction’: Jordan Spieth confident in game despite final-round struggle

Jordan Spieth’s struggles over the past several years have been well documented. After a meteoritic rise to start his career — including three major wins by the age of 24 — Spieth is still searching for a way out of his slump.

That elusive next win has evaded the 27-year-old so far this year, but his game seems to be finally rounding into form. After a brutal 2020 that included just two top-10 finishes, Spieth has finished inside the top 10 in three off his past four starts, with the only outlier being a T15 finish at Riviera.

The wins have yet to come, but each week it feels as though Spieth is looking more and more like the golden child of old. His Houdini-like escapes come at a greater frequency and the long putts are falling more often. Spieth’s mental game seems to be growing stronger as well.

Gone are the days when his post-round comments included talk of searching for answers. Now, Spieth is talking like a man who is ready to win again.

“I thought I played a really solid round of golf,” Spieth said Sunday at Bay Hill after shooting a final-round 75. “I trusted a lot of tough shots, hit a lot of good ones. Hit my lines on just about every putt and just nothing went in …  It just wasn’t my day.”

His tone is a far cry from what we heard as recently as the U.S. Open last September. After a second-round 81 at Winged Foot, Spieth admitted that he didn’t even know where the ball was going when he stood over it. Those dark days seem to be behind him.

There have been flashes of that greatness of old sprinkled over the past several years, but they were always met with Spieth tumbling back down to earth. The past month has been the most sustained success we’ve seen him have since his early-career dominance — and his demeanor suggests we should expect to see more of it.

“I’ll look back very positively at the way that my attitude today, the way I was walking, the confidence that I took into every single shot, again, that’s going to serve me well going forward,” Spieth said. “I made a step in the right direction today, regardless of the result.”