Jordan Spieth missed a gimme. Then his wife gave him a clever tip.

One one-thousand.  

Two one-thousand. 

Three one-thousand. 

Four one-thousand. 

Five one-thousand. 

Now putt, Annie says.

She’s Jordan Spieth’s wife. She’s his recently turned putting counsel. On Saturday, during the third round of the RBC Heritage, her man and her student missed from 11 feet on the 18th green at Harbour Town Golf Links, circled around the hole, then missed from 11 inches. Spieth and Jim Nantz were stunned. 

But Annie cut to the chase. 

Take. Your. Time. 

“So Annie told me last night, you need to take five seconds now — and she never comments on my golf,” Spieth said Sunday. “You need to take five seconds, if you miss a putt, before you hit your tap-in. So I thought about it today. There was a couple times I was just going to rake it, and I was like, no, I’ve got to take five seconds.”

For the record, a GOLF.com reporter estimated that Spieth took one second (one one-thousand) on his hiccup on Saturday. And Spieth said Sunday that he hoped it would cost him — ”because, if it didn’t, it meant I just played a very average round today.” 

In the end, as you know by now, he didn’t. During the RBC final round, Spieth rallied with a five-under 66, and he won after a one-hole playoff with Patrick Cantlay. The putt was but one stroke. 

And it wasn’t. 

“I was about as upset after the round yesterday as I’ve ever been in a golf tournament,” Spieth said. “There’s just no excuse for those kind of brain farts as a professional to myself, but also to Michael [Greller, his caddie], who’s working his butt off, to go out there and do that that could potentially affect the outcome of a tournament. And I’ve done that a number of times on this stretch in the last four weeks.”

Is there an explanation behind it all? Spieth isn’t missing just short putts, either. Notably, he won despite losing strokes to the field in putting (he was 65th at the RBC in SG: Putting, at -2.545.). 

Spieth’s guess? It again goes back to time.   

“I’ve been hitting the ball really, really well all spring, better than I did last year, and I just haven’t been scoring,” he said. “So I just, I put in a lot of hours on the putting green this week, and to be honest, if it helped incrementally, it was just enough.

“I’ve got a lot more work to do. I’ve been putting a lot of work into my full swing, and that certainly takes away some of the time you put into other parts of your game, including putting.

“So I think I can kind of shift the other direction now and get to really working on the stroke, which is what I tried to do this week off of last week. That was the frustration.”

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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.