When Jordan Spieth was at the peak of his powers, it seemed like every putt he looked at went in. Be it the 50-foot putt to win the 2015 Valspar, the 55-foot eagle at the 2017 Open Championship or the 25-foot eagle at the 2015 U.S Open, when Spieth was cooking, he was a wizard with the flat stick.
Per Data Golf, Spieth gained two or more shots on the field on the greens in 2015, 2016 and 2017. In 2019, he gained 2.9 shots on the greens. PGA Tour average, per Data Golf, is around zero. But after the 2019 season, Spieth’s putting started to go the other way. Per PGA Tour stats, Spieth ranked second in putting during the 2018-19 season. In the following six seasons, he has ranked 105th, 33rd, 155th, 79th, 101st and 65th. The three-time major winner dealt with a wrist injury that impacted his swing and has worked to iron out some “bad tendencies” in his putting that made him less reliable on shorter putts and zapped him of his trademark brilliance on the greens.
The putter used to be a key part of what made Spieth Spieth, back when he was a young superstar taking the sport by storm. Now 32, Spieth believes he has tapped back into the putting magic that once captivated everyone. It starts with Spieth’s eyes. He has always putted best when looking at the hole, and over the past two weeks at Pebble Beach and Riviera, Spieth has found that groove again, and it helped him pick up 5.8 shots on the greens at Pebble and 6.1 at this week’s Genesis, where he finished in a tie for 12th. That included 113 feet of putts made in Round 2 and 97 in the final round.
“Looking at my spot, like looking up, looking at the hole, my spot seems to be a weapon that I’ve got back, which is really nice because I feel solid whether it’s breaking or straight, anything in shorter range. Then that frees you up as you start to expand,” Spieth said after his final round on Sunday.
“I putted incredibly well inside of 10 feet, which is something I’ve struggled with at Riviera in particular, not that everybody does. It would be hard for me to believe anybody putted better
inside 10 feet this week, and that was huge because those were par saves, those were second putts, stuff that keeps momentum going, keeps scorecards clean. And I made a few from outside of 10, which helped kind of the second and the fourth round.”
Spieth opened his season at the Sony in Hawaii, where he ranked 35th in the field in putting. He went back to Dallas and worked with his coach, Cameron McCormick, to adjust his putting setup. Spieth lost 1.215 strokes on the greens during a missed cut at the Waste Management, but has found his old feel on the greens over the past two weeks on the West Coast, and he believes that the good vibes he has with the flatstick will bleed into the rest of his game as he looks toward the Florida Swing and the Masters.
“It’s a big deal,” Spieth said. “I mean, it really, you start as close to the hole as you can, and everything that feels comfortable just keeps going further and further away all the way into the long game.”
Spieth’s swing isn’t where he would like it. He took a lot of time off during the offseason and used the first four starts of his year to get a feel for what he needs to sharpen in his swing. With the Masters less than 50 days away, Spieth has a good understanding of the work that needs to be done to match the rest of his game to the “weapon” he has rediscovered.
“But all in all, I want to get it a little bit tighter off the tee,” Spieth said after losing 2.4 shots off the tee at Riviera. “And kind of with iron play, I felt like my short game, wedges and that kind of stuff, and I made great strides, it was kind of C control and A putting. But I know what I need to do and I feel like it’s only going to get better.”
After three weeks on the West Coast, Spieth will head back to Dallas for a week off to work on fixing what ails his swing. But he leaves California having found something he had been searching for, and that has him looking toward a friendly stretch — one that concludes at a course that brings out the best of him — feeling like Jordan Spieth is close to finding the Jordan Spieth of old.
“I feel very confident. I like the stretch that’s coming up,” Spieth said.
“I feel like I’ve got some momentum.”
