Jordan Spieth’s second round at the Players Championship was vintage Jordan Spieth.
Among his seven birdies were a couple of doozies. On his tee shot on 18, his ninth hole of the day, he hit a tree to the right but the ball ricocheted back into the fairway. He went on to make 3. On the par-5 2nd, he toed his drive and didn’t reach the fairway. He got on in three and poured in a 49-footer for another bird.
On the par-4 6th, he played “weird golf” but still made par from off the front of the green. At No. 3, he missed a four-footer for birdie.
So, yeah, typical Spieth stuff.
All that remained was the final hole. When Spieth arrived at the par-5 9th, he was six under on the round and four shots back of the lead. He hit his tee shot into the trees and had to punch out. Trying to steer it into the house, Spieth pulled his third shot from the middle of the fairway left and asked for a provisional. “I don’t know what’s over there,” Spieth told caddie Michael Greller. “I know there’s the driving range.” He found the ball behind a tree and eventually walked off with a double-bogey.
A birdie-filled day ended with the three-time major winner leaving the course with a very relatable feeling: dread over how he finished.
“It was just a bummer, both days finish with doubles. I just played better than that,” Spieth said after his round. “I’ve been playing really well, trying to let the course come to me. Don’t have to force anything. It’s not quite there yet, but it’s like close enough to where I can do what I did today for a while. So just kind of stinks because to finish like that, I would have — some days you wonder if you shot one stroke worse, but you finished with a birdie if you would actually be happier. It’s a weird deal, weird game.”
That frustration is part of golf — a maddening, imperfectable game played by gluttons for punishment. But there’s no doubt that Spieth’s angst also had to do with the setting.
For the past decade, Pete Dye’s Stadium Course has given Spieth fits. In his last 10 Players Championships, Spieth has missed six cuts and has just one top-20 finish. He is trying to approach it differently this year. That has been successful at times, but he still finds himself unable to avoid the occasional Sawgrass landmine that he found on each of his final holes in Rounds 1 and 2. That would make Dye smile.
“This place has gotten the best of me in the past, and I let it get the best of me a couple times this week already,” Spieth said. “That cost me probably four shots, so hopefully it’s not too much to make up. But things are really good, and I need to have even more kind of patience here than I do other places, and it’s just 13 times in a row I continue to just — something gets me here, and I just don’t quite have the patience for it.”
Patience will be the final piece of the puzzle that allows Spieth to finally conquer his Sawgrass demons. He hasn’t found it yet, but everything else is in place for Spieth to find the answers that have eluded him for a decade at the PGA Tour’s flagship event.
Through two rounds at TPC Sawgrass, Spieth, who as of this writing was seven off the lead, ranks 10th in Strokes Gained: Approach and Around the Green. He is losing over a shot off the tee and is slightly negative on the greens. Spieth drove the ball better on Friday, though. He paired five consecutive birdies with moments of wild, erratic golf. All of it added up to a four-under 68 and a chance to contend at Sawgrass for the first time since his only Players top-10, which was a T4 in 2014.
All of that is proof that Spieth is close to being the Spieth of old, or at least the best version of this current iteration of Spieth.
“I’m doing everything well,” he said. “The stats aren’t necessarily showing exactly how solid things are. I feel like I’ve hit a lot of especially approach shots the last two weeks where I’m posing, saying, man, I did my job, and then I’m just shocked at where they end up, short or long or whatever.”
Spieth barely thinks about the wrist he had surgery on after the 2024 season. He believes he has his “weapon” back on the greens and is close to putting it all together. As he was rolling along in the middle of Friday’s round, Spieth felt it. The hole looked big, the irons were slotted, he was surviving moments of “weird golf” and the bounces were going his way.
But as most golfers know, all that matters is the last swing, the final hole. It carries more weight than the rest.
When asked if he’d be able to flush the closing double and focus on the positives, Spieth said, “Never. Have you ever played golf?”
“I didn’t feel like I did too much wrong, so in that sense it wasn’t like I made any decision errors. It was execution. I can swallow that a lot easier.”
Seven birdies, a weekend tee time at the Players and the feeling that his best is within his grasp should help, but that double bogey will linger in his mind until Spieth pegs it on Saturday afternoon.
That’s the deal all golfers make. It’s a bargain Jordan Spieth will make once again on Saturday at TPC Sawgrass, hoping that this time he’ll have the patience to find all the answers to Dye’s exacting test.
