JOIN USNew force on rapid rise
Failing is not the worst feeling in the world. If Jordan Spieth’s Grand Slam hopes had disappeared in the cup along with Dustin Johnson’s eagle putt on the 18th hole of Chambers Bay Golf Course on Sunday night, he would have learned from the few poor shots he hit in the final round and moved on.
For Spieth, the worst feeling in the world was accepting that the outcome of the 115th US Open was out of his hands. Spieth’s burning desire to control the results is what chased him out of baseball in his middle school years. A promising left-handed pitcher, Spieth might have developed into the next Clayton Kershaw if not for his palpable distaste for games being won or lost on the bats or gloves of others.
On his 71st hole, Spieth hit an errant 6-iron off the tee on the par-3 to set up a double bogey. As Johnson lined up his 12-foot eagle putt on his 72nd hole, Spieth squirmed in the scorer’s tent. He could barely stand to look.
“That started to go through my head as I was sitting there watching,” he said. “How am I going to react now? What do I say? How am I going to feel when I had it in my hands and just a normal 6-iron from taking it home?”
Embedded in Spieth’s conclusion was the answer to a different question: What will golf look like after Tiger Woods?
“It wouldn’t have changed much about how I felt about myself or my confidence or my game,” Spieth said.
He added: “But it would have stung. It would have stung a lot because it was mine. It was mine to lose and mine to win on those last two holes. I controlled the destiny then.”
Spieth’s double bogey at No 17 became a footnote, not the focus, after he birdied the 18th to finish at 5-under and Johnson parred the hole to finish one stroke back. By the thinnest of margins, Jordan’s Rule became the sport’s smash hit of the summer.
“You only get a few moments in your life like this, and I recognize that,” Spieth said after becoming the sixth man and the first since Woods in 2002 to win the first two majors of the year. “And to have two in one year and to still be early in the year, that’s hard to wrap my head around.”
Imagine how hard it must be for Rory McIlroy, the world’s No 1 golfer who won the final two majors of 2014, to process the events of this year. McIlroy has three worldwide victories in 2015, including a World Golf Championships event, and he closed with a saber-rattling 66 on Sunday.
At 26, McIlroy has four major victories. And yet he was so far under the radar at the Open that his decision not to talk to the print news media the first two days caused barely a ripple of discontent.
For all its quirks, Chambers Bay identified the best player in the world right now, and it is not McIlroy, whose victories are his only top-three finishes on the PGA Tour in 2015. When McIlroy is on, he is unbeatable, but when his game is a little off, as it was last week, he is not a factor.
Spieth tamed Chambers Bay with his B-plus game. “Didn’t have my best stuff ball-striking at all and we really grinded over those 4- or 5-footers,” he said, “and that was the difference.”
Spieth’s older rival has yet to show the same aptitude for grinding in a major. It is victory or backdoor top 10 for McIlroy, who tied for ninth Sunday.
More than four years separate Spieth, who turns 22 in July, from McIlroy. That doesn’t sound like much until you consider that the gap in age between Spieth and the youngest competitor at Chambers Bay, Cole Hammer, was less than six.
Spieth stiff-arms all comparisons to McIlroy.
“I’m certainly quite a bit younger than he is,” Spieth said. “I’m just happy to have this and to be chasing that No 1 spot which he holds.”
Who’s chasing whom? In a matter of months, McIlroy has gone from the game’s young gun to its elder statesman. Before the tournament, he staked his claim to the mountaintop.
“If you look back at the last four or five years, I guess I’ve won more majors than anyone else in that time period,” McIlroy said. “So do I feel like the best player in the world? Yes. And obviously I want to go out every week and try to back that up and show that.”
The budding rivals will resume their battle for world domination in four weeks at the British Open. They will arrive in St Andrews, considered the birthplace of golf, holding all the major men’s titles.
Spieth has played the Old Course once, he said, during a stopover on the way to the 2011 Walker Cup matches at Royal Aberdeen Golf Club. He recalled strolling through the clubhouse and gazing slack-jawed at framed pictures from the 15th and 16th centuries.
“To go to the home of golf and what I consider one of the coolest places in the world is going to be really special,” Spieth said, adding, “I’m sure it will be a great time, and I look forward to enjoying the town, obviously the tournament, but to enjoy the whole experience of playing in an Open Championship.”
As a student of the game, Spieth has a hard time comprehending the piece of history within his grasp. Nobody has won the modern-day Grand Slam. In 1930, Bobby Jones won the British Amateur, the British Open, the US Amateur and the US Open to complete a sweep of his era’s majors. In 2001, Woods held all four major titles concurrently. “I’m just focused on the claret jug now,” Spieth said. “I think that the Grand Slam is something that I never could really fathom somebody doing, considering I watched Tiger when he was winning whatever percentage of the majors he played in and the Tiger Slam. But he never won four in one year, and I figured if anybody was going to do it, it would be him, which he still can.”
Spieth is homing in on history, and yet to hear him speak he has only scratched the surface of his potential.
“There’s always a way to get better,” he said, adding: “I can strike the ball better than I did this week; I can get more positive. I can improve in all aspects of my game. I believe that.”