Jordan Spieth charges, can’t make up ground after playing ‘Way too much golf’

Is there such a thing as too much golf? According to Jordan Spieth, yes.

Spieth made a charge Sunday afternoon in the final round of the Masters Tournament, shooting 6-under 66 despite a closing bogey. But he was too far back after a third-round 76 and ultimately finished T-4 alongside Patrick Reed and Russell Henley.

The 2015 Masters champion attributed some of his struggles prior to the final round to a packed schedule leading into Augusta.

Full-field scores from the 87th Masters Tournament

“I think I played way too much golf into this,” Spieth said. “I came in mentally fatigued, and you overwork this week every year. I played way too much golf in the last, I mean, this is eight out of 10 weeks. So I need to change my schedule up going forward to be a little sharper this week.

“I think that has a lot to do with it.”

Since teeing it up at Pebble Beach the first weekend in February, Spieth sat out only The Honda Classic and the Valero Texas Open prior to the Masters. He played five designated events in that stretch, including The Players Championship and WGC-Match Play.

While Spieth led with the mental fatigue, there were certainly other reasons the three-time major champion credited for leaving him too far behind heading into the final round.

“Just a little lack of patience with the course being softer, thinking that meant I could try to attack more pins,” Spieth said. “Same thing I do at The Players every year. You have to let the course come to you out here. I do a better job here than anywhere else, and it left me this week. I just feel I got a little bit lazy in picking targets. I probably only had a target 50 percent of the shots this week, and I like to have them 100 percent of the time. I kind of was trying to remind myself, but there were a few swings Thursday and Friday where I could have really taken it quite a bit deeper and left a few out there.”

Like Brooks Koepka, Spieth got the good end of the weather draw. The former Longhorn played Thursday afternoon and Friday morning in great scoring conditions before Mother Nature began to shake her fist late on Day 2.

It was a great start for Spieth on Thursday, sitting at 4 under through just eight holes of his opening round, but he would play 1 over the rest of the way, including a double bogey at the par-5 13^th. The first-round 69 was followed by a 2-under-par 70 Friday morning, leaving Spieth seven shots behind Koepka heading into the weekend.

Spieth would go on to say that he has no regrets for setting up his schedule the way he did, but that it would likely be different moving forward.

“I would attest some of my decision-making just to a level of focus that I wish I had a little bit more of,” Spieth said. “If I’m trying to pinpoint it, it seems like I don’t remember the last time I tried to peak on my eighth out of 10 weeks in a row. I don’t remember ever having that.

“So, yeah, like I said, this is a year that’s a bridge year for us on the PGA Tour. So I want to keep playing the elevated events as well as the other events that I really love to play. So I knew that was going to happen this year, but it should be decided for me in the future, which would be a good thing.”