NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. — He knows the questions are coming. They always do when the season’s second major rolls around, the major that’s bedeviled him for a decade, the major that stands between him and immortality. That’s the burden of being Jordan Spieth, being reminded every year of just how close you once were to being a legend … and just how much work remains for you to close the deal.
During one magnificent flurry in 2015, Spieth won the Masters and the U.S. Open, then missed out on winning the Open Championship and the PGA Championship — which would have made him the first man in modern golf history to complete a one-season Grand Slam — by atotalof three strokes. He owned the golf world then, and when he tacked on a miraculous Open Championship in 2017, well, it sure looked like collecting the Career Grand Slam was only a matter of time.
“Obviously, with having won the other three,” Spieth said Monday at Aronimink in advance of his latest PGA attempt, “that's the one that everyone focuses on.”
Spieth carved out his three-of-four in an era when both Rory McIlroy and Phil Mickelson were deep in the hunt for their fourth, and for a brief moment, it looked like he’d get there well before either of them.
But he missed on winning the PGA in 2017, and then 2018 and 2019, and then came the 2020s, and then the mid-2020s. He hasn’t ever truly been close; even though he was T3 in 2019, he was still six strokes behind Brooks Koepka’s sledgehammering of Bethpage. He’s only won two tournaments of any stripe since that 2017 Open Championship, and he hasn’t come any closer than T29 in any PGA Championship in the 2020s.
“I went on a run of feeling like I was contending, or having a good chance of contending, at every major for a number of years,” Spieth said. “And then it was periodic, and I feel like I'm close to being able to go back to doing that again. I just want to give myself a chance.”
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He might be more right than usual about being close. Put aside the fact that he’s said that on numerous occasions over the last few years. His world golf ranking has risen from 89 earlier this year to 51 coming into this week. In terms of strokes gained on the field, he’s clambered back from outside the top 100 to inside the top 40 now. He’s back to flirting with top-10 finishes and late-Sunday tee times.
“My game has been getting better and better,” he said. “It's plenty good to have a chance to win. It's about working my way into contention.”
If Spieth can close out the Career Grand Slam this week, he’ll be just the seventh man to achieve that feat. (Scottie Scheffler gets his first crack at the mark next month at the U.S. Open.) But even if he doesn’t, Spieth will be in some pretty good company. Both Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson lacked only the PGA Championship to complete their majors. And Mickelson never did close his deal, still needing the U.S. Open for his own slam.
Spieth insists that he doesn’t pile any significant extra weight onto this particular week. “The easiest way to [win] is to not try to, in a weird way, you know,” he said. “Just go out and get ready for the first hole, get a good game plan in and attack [the course] the way it needs to be attacked.”
It all sounds good and reasonable — just play what the course gives you, trust in your process, and a thousand other well-worn coachspeak phrases. But beneath all that, Spieth still knows what’s at stake here. He knows what he’s playing for every time the PGA comes around.
“This tournament's always highlighted,” he said. “If I can win one more tournament in my life, it would obviously be this one for that reason.”
