Do good and bad luck even out in golf? Jordan Spieth explains

Jordan Spieth, on the par-4 5th at Liberty National on Friday, hit his second shot from 81 yards out, it dropped a few feet behind the hole, spun back and fell for an eagle 2. Jump ahead to the next hole, the par-5 6th. Spieth, after a second shot that came within inches of spilling into the water right of the green, pitched on, his ball dropped a few feet right of the hole, and it fell for an eagle 3.   

“No,” announcer Terry Gannon said on the Golf Channel broadcast. 

“What?” analyst Nick Faldo said. 

Once is shocking. Twice, and you’re speechless. Then again, this is Spieth, What about … 124 times? That’s the number of hole-outs from off the green he has dunked since 2013, according to stats guru Justin Ray (which amazingly trails Patrick Reed’s 128 over that period). At what point is a lucky shot actually just likely? It all begged this question to Spieth following Friday’s second round of the Northern Trust: 

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“When golfers have good luck, bad luck, at the end, do you think it’s all 50/50, equal?”

“It’s weird, it’s like you just, always kind of focus on when you get a bad break versus the good one,” Spieth said. “I would imagine, yeah, it evens out.

“I think of that as like the draw the first two days for your career; it will probably even out. You just hope that you get the Open Championship, you get more good ones than bad because that’s normally the most significant difference of any tournament.

“As far as breaks on course, yeah, I mean, I would think over the course of I think when you get done, you look back and you’re like, all right, yeah, it’s probably 50/50.”

Though 124 hole-outs would maybe suggest otherwise, consider where his tee shot went on the next hole:

The bunker. 

“You know, when things start to go well, you go on a run, right?” Spieth said. “You get momentum and the ball finds the cup, and when it’s not going well, it seems to, it bounces the wrong way. I feel like I’m on the right side of some momentum right now and I just have to keep it going.”

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Nick Piastowski

Golf.com Editor

Nick Piastowski is a Senior Editor at Golf.com and Golf Magazine. In his role, he is responsible for editing, writing and developing stories across the golf space. And when he’s not writing about ways to hit the golf ball farther and straighter, the Milwaukee native is probably playing the game, hitting the ball left, right and short, and drinking a cold beer to wash away his score. You can reach out to him about any of these topics — his stories, his game or his beers — at nick.piastowski@golf.com.

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