As Jordan Spieth has come in and out of the wilderness in recent years, his swing seemingly has been a perpetual work in progress. We know this because, way more than most players of his ilk, Spieth lets us into the game-improvement tent, chronicling his process with generous, often fascinating, detail.
Take the week before the 2021 Masters, at the Valero Texas Open, where Spieth shot a tidy third-round 67; this was a day before he went on to win by two for his first Tour title since 2017. Spieth said many interesting things about his swing after that round — that he was trying to get “shallower transitionally;” that he thinks about “six different things” during his move; that he’s “trying to go back in time structurally to a place that I’ve been.”
But the most revealing insight was this: Spieth said he was trying to find a “swing feel that’s kind of like an artistic motion, like almost I can see it happening from behind me as I’m feeling it.” His description sounded like a scene from an M. Night Shyamalan film, but what he was saying was, on one level, actually quite simple: Be a kid again. Don’t overthink things. Trust your God-given talents and hit the shot that is required.
If you were watching the golf Sunday — the AT&T Byron Nelson live from TPC Craig Ranch in McKinney, Texas, near Dallas — you were no doubt intrigued to see how Spieth would respond to the pressure of trying to win in front of his boisterous home crowd. Spieth’s game is on much more solid footing than it was a year or two ago, but he is still one of the game’s great high-wire acts.
On Sunday, the par-3 17th at Craig Ranch was playing all of 134 yards; there aren’t many shorter holes on the PGA Tour. When Spieth arrived on the tee, he was just one back of K.H. Lee. A birdie at 17 would go a long way, especially with a reachable par-5 ahead at 18.
There was one problem: 134 is an “awful number” for Spieth, he said after the round. A dreaded in-betweener distance. Time to get creative.
CBS didn’t show a tight shot of Spieth’s ball on the tee, but if you were listening closely, you heard on-course reporter Dottie Pepper note that Spieth didn’t use a tee, instead placing his ball on the tightly mown Zoysia turf. Spieth never explained why he went sans tee, but presumably he felt trapping the ball would help him execute the “chippy draw” he had in his mind’s eye.
