No Reason To Doubt Jordan Spieth

When Jordan Spieth fell apart on the back nine of the Masters on that fateful Sunday – in a place where it is often said the tournament doesn’t start until the final nine holes – he said afterwards he’d need quite a while to deal with the disappointment.

Well, healing comes quickly for the young. And Spieth, 22, has that resilience of spirit.

OK, so he didn’t win a second consecutive Masters. But he could win a second straight U.S. Open, and no one has done that since Curtis Strange in 1989.

The Open is June 16-19 at Oakmont Country Club just outside of Pittsburgh. Spieth was in the neighborhood on Tuesday for a ceremony in which a $1 million donation to the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital was made in his name as the reigning FedEx Cup champion. He had not played on the PGA Tour since the Masters in early April, so he was promptly asked if he had recovered from the disaster of a quadruple-bogey and letting a five-stroke lead vanish at the Masters.

“I’m not taking it very hard,” Spieth said. “I’ve got ladies at grocery stores coming up and putting their hand on me going, ‘I’m really praying for you. How you doing?’ My dog didn’t die. I’m doing ok. I’ll survive. It happens. I laugh about it now, I really do.”

There’s not a successful golfer who hasn’t been humbled by the game. Maybe the sooner, the better. And perspective helps.

“We’ve now, coming down the stretch, had a chance to win six majors, including five in a row, and I won two of them. That’s still a pretty good percentage. … A third of the time. Considering my age and hopefully continued good health, if we keep that percentage up we’ll be all right.”

And that is all right.
 
 
Post By: Larry Weisman, a longtime sportswriter for USA TODAY, blogs for Twistity.com. Follow him on Twitter @MrLarryWeisman