Jordan Spieth didn’t win the 2014 Masters Tournament. He didn’t win because no debutant has won the Masters since the greens at Augusta National were made of Bermuda grass. He didn’t win because he’s only 20 years old, and because 20-year-olds don’t have the temperament to win major championships. He didn’t win because his swing literally and quite visibly fell apart over the weekend; it’s tough to hit the ball straight and hard with a one-handed follow-through. Most of all, he didn’t win because Bubba Watson is a force of nature whose talents couldn’t be more suited to Augusta National if Bobby Jones and Alister Mackenzie had hired him as a consulting architect.
But Jordan Spieth could, and arguably should, have won the Masters. Watson may possess a wickedly sweet combination of John Daly’s power and Lee Trevino’s shot-making skills, but Spieth’s youth, consistency and relentlessness mark him out as a logical American successor to Tiger Woods. Not bad for a kid ranked no. 809 in the world as recently as the start of 2013.
If you’re not familiar with Spieth’s rise to near-stardom, his progression to the PGA Tour was far from traditional. He was an accomplished junior golfer – only he and Woods have ever won the US Junior Amateur twice – and he was on the final-round leaderboard at the Byron Nelson in 2010 as a 16-year-old before finishing tied for 16th. After winning an NCAA championship and first-team All-American honors at Texas, and starring in the 2011 Walker Cup, he turned professional in December 2012...after failing to reach the final stage of PGA Tour Qualifying School. With no official Tour status, and therefore reliant upon a maximum of seven sponsor exemptions for the 2013 season, Spieth quickly notched three Top 10 finishes to gain temporary playing privileges and then won the John Deere Classic in July by finishing with three straight 65s, holing a bunker shot at the 72nd hole and defeating Zach Johnson in a playoff. By the end of the year he had nine Top 10s, finished eighth in the FedEx Cup and was picked as a wild card for the US Presidents Cup team. And by all accounts he remains incredibly down-to-earth, pleasant to be around and aware of his surroundings – Tom Kite apparently emailed him recently to say, “Jordan, I'm going to come out on the PGA Tour and kick your ass if you keep calling me ‘mister’.”
I watched Spieth a lot on television last year and was constantly impressed by his composure and his presence – as in, he seemed to be present on my television pretty much every weekend. Some Tour stars are like the little girl with the curl: when they’re good, they’re very good indeed, but when they’re bad they miss cuts. Spieth isn’t one of them. Since turning professional, Spieth has finished 25th or better in a staggering 63% of the PGA Tour events he’s entered. By comparison, Woods’ Top 25 rate in his first year-and-a-half as a pro (1996-97) was 72%, whereas McIlroy’s (2009-10) was 48% and Mickelson’s (1992-93) only 31% – and all three of them were older then than Spieth is now. (Watson’s rate? 28%.) Spieth’s record isn’t bottom-heavy, either: so far he’s finished first or second six times, comparable with Woods’ equivalent mark of seven and well ahead of Mickelson’s three and McIlroy’s one. All he needs to do is start winning more often, and that will surely come.
The comparison between McIlroy and Spieth seems particularly apt. In the 2011 Masters, McIlroy led by four shots at the start of the final round, still led by one at the turn, then promptly imploded with 7-5-5 on holes 10-11-12 and shrank into a tie for 15th. This year Spieth, despite struggling for much of the front nine on Sunday, holed a bunker shot and made three other birdies in his first seven holes to take a two-stroke lead. He was right there, ready to kick the field in the teeth and make history as the youngest ever major champion. Then he missed short putts on eight and nine to suddenly fall two back after a pair of Bubba birdies, and his composure buckled at the 10th after a pushed iron shot led to a Tiger-esque club-pound into the fairway turf (and presumably a handwritten apology to ANGC Chairman Billy Payne). But he immediately hunkered down with an exquisite bunker shot and parred every hole on the back nine save the 12th, where he made one final rookie mistake – challenging the flag and finding Rae’s Creek – yet salvaged bogey with a wonderful wedge and putt. He couldn’t pressure Watson into making mistakes, but his game never disappeared, and unlike several other famous names that day he never wilted. And remember: McIlroy followed his Augusta collapse in 2011 with an eight-shot victory at the US Open two months later.
The one potential knock on Spieth is that at only 107th on the Tour in driving distance, he’s not a big hitter, and with the sole recent exception of Luke Donald, only big hitters have ascended to the top of the World Golf Rankings. But I’d really like to see him try. I like Bubba Watson a lot – his home-cooked brand of brilliance is very easy to root for, and he’s begun 2014 like someone trying to prove that his first Masters triumph was no fluke. But if Watson is an eccentric and gregarious genius like Mozart, Spieth seems more akin to J.S. Bach: reliable, grounded and methodical, yet still capable of great beauty and sustained excellence over a period of decades. Particularly with the Ryder Cup on the horizon, I hope he starts winning big and winning soon, and if the 2014 Masters marked the beginning of a proper rivalry, the next several decades may be full of beautiful music.