ORLANDO, Fla. – It didn’t take Jordan Spieth very long to figure out the PNC Championship is different than most other tournaments. He happened to be in the locker room at Ritz-Carlton Golf Club early Thursday when he ran into this week’s oldest and youngest competitors in the team event. In one area stood Gary Player. Nearby was young Will McGee, son of LPGA great Annika Sorenstam.
Seventy-six years separate the two.
“That was new for me,” Spieth said, smiling. He is making his PNC debut alongside his father, Shawn. “There’s a dispersion on the PGA TOUR, but it’s like 20 to 50 ... not 11 to 87. So that was cool to see.”
There are lots of cool things going on in Spieth’s life these days. Thursday delivered an announcement he would be an investor and strategic partner with Invited (formerly ClubCorp). Sammy Spieth, Jordan and Annie Spieth’s first child, just turned 1, and Jordan is enjoying all the marvels of fatherhood. At the PNC, he and his dad, the man who introduced him to golf, will enjoy a festive “boys' week.” Two other members of the Spieth family – Shawn’s younger brother, Stow, and Jordan’s younger brother, Steven – will be on their bags.
The Spieths are pretty amped up about their first-day PNC pairing, too, teeing it up alongside rising LPGA star Nelly Korda, the top player in the women’s game, and her father, former tennis standout Petr Korda. (In fact, Shawn, 60, a business executive who doesn’t play much golf but can score in the 80s, has but one simple swing thought for the week: Swing it like Nelly.)
“The worst part,” Jordan said, assessing his father’s sporadic game, “is when he wants to hit a drive really far, which is most every drive.”
Best yet for Jordan, after a frustrating dip in form following his 2017 victory at The Open Championship – Spieth’s third major, captured before his 24th birthday – he is seeing some strong signs that his game continues to slowly build back toward the levels of greatness he achieved earlier in his 20s.
“There were times when I didn’t think I ever would (turn it around),” Spieth, a former world No. 1, said in a quieter moment outside the locker room after lightning storms and heavy rains ended pro-am play for the day.
“Doubts are a dagger of a feeling in professional sports, and I had plenty of it. So, in that sense, when I look back, I’m really excited. At the same time, I know where my ceiling is, and it still stinks not being at my ceiling.”
After enduring 82 starts between his 2017 Open Championship triumph and winning again at the Valero Texas Open last year (he would add the RBC Heritage earlier this year), Spieth, having climbed back to 14th in the world after falling below 80th, seems to have solid momentum.
After three seasons at 135th or worse in Strokes Gained: Off The Tee, Spieth ranked 38th in the category last season. At the Presidents Cup in September, Spieth and old pal Justin Thomas went 4-0 in team play. Spieth even added a victory in singles (over Australia’s Cameron Davis) that not only left him a perfect 5-0, but ended a mystifying stretch of singles play in the Presidents and Ryder Cups. He had been 0-6-1.