Jordan Spieth details wrist injury and surgery, potential timeline for return
Jordan Spieth hits out of a bunker during the second round of the FedEx St. Jude Championship at TPC Southwind on Aug. 16, 2024, in Memphis, Tenn.
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Jordan Spieth finally took care of his nagging wrist injury last month, electing to have surgery after his season ended at the FedEx St. Jude Championship.
Now, two weeks removed from a successful procedure, the really hard part begins — patiently waiting to return.
Spieth joined Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz on SiriusXM PGA Tour Radio on Wednesday and detailed his injury, the surgery and his pending recovery, saying he should be able to start taking full swings 10 weeks from now in mid November. He added that the challenging part will be trying to take it slow when he reaches the 10-to-12-week period and is able to start lightly training.
“Should be plenty fine by the new year,” Spieth said. “I just don’t know if I’d be able to play any of the events in December as tune-ups or anything. That seems like a stretch right now. But I’m also immobilized two weeks in, so everything feels like a stretch. So that’s what I’ve been told. I’ve also been told no one ever comes back too late.”
Spieth said his wrist injury dates all the way back to late 2017, when he injured it during a training session. He said he didn’t get it fixed right away and fell into some bad swing habits, and it would act up without warning — even when he started to play better despite it.
Then came May 2023, when Spieth was playing with his son in the pool. He got out, felt something pop and had to withdraw from the AT&T Byron Nelson.
“And it’s kind of been something this year where that kind of dislocation has happened, you know, 20-some odd times since February and it started to happen more and more,” Spieth said. “So it was something that couldn’t fix itself with rest, unfortunately. So that’s why I ended up having to do this.”
Oddly enough, the injury never bothered him much while actually playing golf, but it would appear randomly off the course, or occasionally right before a tee time. He said he would just “kind of get the tendon back in place” and carry on.
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“There was one day, it was the Friday of John Deere this year where I actually texted Michael like, ‘Hey man, it came out last night, it hasn’t gone back in overnight, and I can’t do this. I gotta go get this thing fixed now,'” he said. “So that Friday of the John Deere, I was calling it quits actually. It was an afternoon tee time and I actually ended up getting to the range about 15 minutes before my time cause I finally got it in and just said let’s just see what happens here this week, and then I can reassess after if I play through the Open or whatever.
“Late this year it just started to happen more and more. So there was that one specific time there where I remember, you know, I’m withdrawing and I gotta go get this done. But it was just gonna be another three or four weeks of play and see if I can maybe put something together to get to that top 50 or top 30, knowing that I was for sure at that point gonna have the operation when my season ended.”
Spieth was winless in 22 starts last season, finishing in the top 10 three times. He hasn’t won since the 2022 RBC Heritage and missed the Tour Championship for the first time since 2020.
This past season, he drove the ball better than he ever has (13th in SG: Off the tee) but ranked 131st in approach and 94th in putting. He said the wrist never hindered his game off the tee, but as he got closer to the green, and with certain shots, he started thinking about it.
“More kind of ground impact, anytime I had up-slope shots, like I said I really didn’t wanna make any excuses for myself the whole year because it wasn’t hurting to hit the shot, and then I’d get into competition and then I’d just bail,” he said. “It was very strange. And so I guess it was a big enough sample size over a year, you’d think it frustrates you after a week or two, but for me, I just kind of kept thinking, you know, this is just something mechanically I gotta fix. And at least now I have some clarity.”
Spieth said he’s already started “very minimal” physical therapy.
“Hopefully I come back from this and I just don’t have to think about it, and I know that may not be the case the first few months I get back into it,” Spieth said. “But from what I hear, I talked to a lot of different players who’ve had similar operations and a lot of guys across different sports and they’re like, ‘Look, one day you’ll wake up and if you’re patient enough, you do the right rehab, you listen to your docs and you take your time, there’ll be one day where you wake up and you’re like, man, I just totally forgot that there was ever an issue.’ So I look forward to that day. I don’t know when it’ll be but I imagine hopefully that’ll be within the next four or five months and then I get back to being me.”
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