GD_SHANE_SPIETH_13TH_2017_16x9_4K

Have you ever known somebody who can look a little bit aimless, a little bit lost, but when a crisis comes, they get incredibly focused and start functioning at a level you didn't think they had. I think some people are drawn to the chaos. They can stand in the flames and not get burned. And I think that happened to Jordan Spieth in one of his strangest moments. It was the 13th hole of the final round of the 2017 Open Championship, when in the midst of a pretty bad day, he hit what had to be one of the worst drives of the entire tournament. He took a penalty, had to hit from the driving range, lost his lead for the first time, but somehow it was the greatest thing that could have happened to him. In a crisis, he found some hidden magic, and he did it with quick thinking, composure under incredible pressure, and a kind of inspiration that is hard to define and even harder to explain. But let's try. We're going back almost a decade to Sunday, July 23rd, 2017. This is a different Jordan Spieth than we're used to today. This was Spieth close to his top form. Comes into that Open ranked third in the world, already won twice that year. However, his incredible play at the majors had hit a serious roadblock a year earlier when he blew a five-shot lead on the back nine at Augusta and lost the Masters to Danny Willett. Keep that one in mind, because at Berkdale, he was on fire again. Five under in round one, shoots a 69 on a difficult Friday to take the solo lead by two shots, and then puts together a brilliant third round 65 to lead Matt Kuchar by three and everybody else by six. It seemed very much like redemption was at hand. But this is Jordan Spieth, okay? It was never going to be easy. He goes out on Sunday, he makes a bogey on one, makes a bogey on three, makes a bogey on four, and suddenly he was tied with Kuchar at eight under. The lead was gone. In an excellent Golf Digest oral history by Dave Shedlosky and John Huggen, Nick Faldo said he thought Spieth looked bloody lost at that point. But he rallied, but then he faltered again, and the two were still tied at eight under, going into number 13. And Spieth was worried. Negative thoughts were creeping in. He wondered if he was collapsing again. Worst of all, he couldn't putt. Nothing was falling, and then this three putt on number nine was particularly painful. The weather in Southport was matching his mood. It was overcast. There was a light rain, some fog in the air, and it seemed for Spieth like the outcome was going to be failure. The 13th hole at Royal Birkdale is a long par four. There are three fairway bunkers on the right side of the hole, but players still aim slightly right because of this, a burn that runs along the left side of the hole. Matt Kuchar stepped up first, hit his drive into the right rough with a very nice lie, and then Spieth proceeded to do this. It's not often you see a pro golfer with his hands on his head after a shot, but this shot deserved it. Now, at first, nobody could find the ball, and maybe that was the first sign that things were about to get incredibly strange. Roger Bathurst, the R&A assistant referee with Spieth's group, couldn't even track down anyone who saw it land, which was very odd because, look, there are plenty of people there, but eventually he found a group on top of the sand dunes who said it had hit someone's head and bounced over the dunes onto the other side. Meanwhile, you had other people saying it was on the fairway side of the dunes, which was wrong by about 50 yards and only added to the confusion. Spieth was getting frustrated at the sheer amount of people around. The guy who got hit was apparently bleeding from the head. Watch, you can see him here. They're all pointing to this bald guy, although I don't see any blood, but in the end, it seems to be a TV cameraman who cracked the case. He was in communication with the truck, and they might have been the ones to track it down. One way or another, you can see the moment they find the ball here. Unfortunately, the lie was beyond nasty. It was unplayable. Okay, now is the point where I try to explain the way that Spieth managed the rules, how on earth he went from buried in the grass at the bottom of a sand dune to hitting this third shot from the driving range, and why he was wandering around these equipment trucks in the middle of it all. And if you find yourself confused, that's okay. So was I. I think so were most people. Let's figure this out together. First thing you have to know is that Spieth decided that even if he could get a club on it, there was no guarantee he could advance it, either to the fairway or really anywhere less dangerous. So he decided to take a penalty stroke and the unplayable lie. And as his caddy Michael Greller would later say, for a gambler like Spieth, that's a big deal, because if there was any chance at all he could make this work, he probably would have tried it. I mean, remember, this is the guy who almost died to save par in the third round of a PGA Tour event. Now, once he takes the unplayable, he has three options under what at the time was called Rule 28. Now it's Rule 19. So let's break down each one of them. Option one, take stroke and distance, which just means to go back to the tee, and then you're hitting your third shot. This is a bad option, because at that point, your chances of making a bogey are very, very slim. Double bogey is almost best case scenario. So Spieth considered that a last resort. Option two, probably the most common one, lateral relief, which means you can drop the ball within two club lengths, no closer to the hole. But the problem here for Spieth is that anywhere he might drop, the ball could settle somewhere that was just as bad or maybe even worse than where he found himself now. So then he considered option three. This is the rarest one, back on the line relief. Now, I would say a lot of golfers know what this means, but not everybody. So here's how it works. You are drawing an imaginary line between your ball and the hole, not the tee, the hole, and extending that line backward. And you can drop as far back as you want on that line, as long as you're in bounds. Now, this isn't often a good option. Let's say we're playing a course where there are trees on both sides of the fairway. Back on the line relief is just going to move you further into the woods. It really doesn't help at all. But in some cases, on courses that are more open, it can be really useful. And the first place Spieth looked was at the base of this hill, not far from his ball in front of these equipment trucks. But the problem there is he's too close to the dunes, and he knows he's gonna have to club down to get the ball over. He thought he could maybe hit a seven iron, but that's not going to get him anywhere close to the green. Remember, he's about 250 yards away still. And with this option, he's staring down double bogey, just like if he took stroke and distance. And that's when he had a flash of genius that transformed his entire day. What if, he asked himself, I moved back to the driving range. All of a sudden, a world of possibilities opened up. Yes, you're going to be farther away, but you'll have a beautiful lie. You'll be far enough from the dunes to use a longer club. And maybe you can't get to the green, but you can get a lot closer. And then you can start dreaming of the best case scenario, which is going up and down for bogey. The only problem is, he had no idea if the driving range was in bounds. The first person he asked was Roger Bathurst, the assistant referee. Bathurst says, I think so. But he had to ask another official. Greller tried to convince him to re-tee again, basically take your medicine. Kutcher hit his approach shot. And then in the meantime, the verdict came back from the RNA's rules headquarters. Yes, the driving range is in play. And what's crazy about that is, it wasn't like anybody made this big decision to keep it in play. It's just that nobody thought about it, because why would anyone ever be back there? Why even bother making a rule about it? As you see, it's not easy to plan for Jordan Spieth. And if you think deciding to hit from the range is where things start to get simple here, well, I've got some bad news for you. We're only halfway into this odyssey, because now they have to figure out where to drop. And it turns out, if you go straight back, you run smack dab into these equipment trucks. Bathurst decided that those were temporary immovable obstructions, TIO. In professional golf, you get relief from that. And the idea at that point is, he'll drop and take TIO interference from the trucks to the nearest point of relief. Here's the thing, though. In order to have a good angle, Spieth knows he's got to be to the right of these trucks. And as he moves back on the line, this European tour official, John Parramore, who, by the way, had given Spieth a slow play penalty in Abu Dhabi a year earlier, tells him, where you want to go, 30 yards behind the trucks to get clearance from all these dunes, on your line, the nearest point of relief is to the left. And the left is no good at all for Spieth. But there's a way around this. He can move closer. And this is my favorite part of watching the broadcast because, look, at this point, they cut back to him, and he's now in between the trucks looking to drop. And without context, it's like you're in Bizarro World. What on earth is he doing there? It's every Spieth meme you've ever seen come to life. They end up finding this exact point where the relief defaults to the right of the trucks. They don't make Spieth actually drop his ball because it would have been literally right on top of a Titleist truck. But he gets relief to the right. Now there's a flag in the way. He gets relief from that, too. And then, at last, he drops. But now he had another decision to make, and that was whether to hit a 3-iron or a 3-wood. 30 yards behind the trucks, it was going to be a 3-wood every day. Even here, Spieth thought he was 270 yards to the front of the green and about 75 yards from the top of the sand dunes. But when Greller paced it off, he got 50 yards to the top. And he, Greller, desperately wanted Spieth to use the 3-iron because he knew going long was a complete disaster. And also because a 3-iron gave Spieth a better chance to clear the dunes, which were way closer than he thought. And then Greller pulled a neat trick that really might have saved the day, and you can see it right here. At the top of the dunes, he stood a little further left of the actual line to the hole. The line should have been a little bit over here, but Greller stood here. Why? Because he knew a miss left was better than a miss right, and he didn't want Spieth aiming at the hole itself. Finally, after all this, Spieth pulls the 3-iron, and he's ready to hit. Amazingly, it had been 22 minutes and 20 seconds since he teed off. Now, before we get to what happened next, I want to highlight two things. The first, if you go back and watch this, and you can do it on YouTube, you can watch all 29 minutes of the Sky Sports broadcast in this hole. It is somehow utterly fascinating. And that's kind of a surprise. If you had any normal golfer taking 20 minutes to get it ruling in the middle of a major Sunday, it would be completely boring and probably annoying and frustrating. But this is not a normal golfer. This is Jordan Spieth, and it is agonizing every time they cut away. You just want the camera to stay on him. And by the way, exciting things are happening. It's not like it's dull when they cut away. Rory McIlroy makes an eagle. Brendan Grace holes out from the bunker, but you're just begging for them to come back. And it's because Spieth simultaneously looks like a mad genius and also maybe a man on the verge of a complete breakdown. And that gets to the second thing. Despite the insanity of all this, watch Jordan Spieth's body language throughout. He is completely in control compared to what you see earlier in the day when he was kind of whiny and kind of down on himself. It's like he has come alive. You know how we talked about how certain people are good in a crisis? Well, when chaos comes for Jordan Spieth at Birkdale, it wakes him up. All of a sudden, it seems like he's right at home. Now, when chaos came for him in Augusta a year earlier, he was playing great and it completely disrupted him and he lost. But this time he was playing poorly and it jolts him back to life. Like I said, he can't look away. And now we get to the postscript. He hits his shot. There is this beautiful look as it slices through the fog. He should thank his lucky stars for Greller because he thinks he's gone away right. But in fact, it's straight. And that's because Greller fudged the line. The announcer doesn't like his chances. A horrible trip there. I mean, this is a double drop staring him in the face. And you'd have to think there has got to be a sense of rise in panic. But Jordan Spieth is mainlining energy now. He hits a gorgeous chip over this bunker. He makes the bogey putt. He has avoided disaster brilliantly. So that's the 13th hole. Spieth now trails Kuchar by one shot. It's the first time all day he's trailed. The momentum should be totally against him. In fact, Kuchar would play the next four holes of two under par. Let me It is not close to enough because what happens next is maybe one of the great closing stretches in the history of major championship golf. And I think it's certainly the greatest putting display under pressure that I've ever seen. Here's what Greller said after he made the bogey putt on 13. Quote, I remember thinking this is going to be the most fun that you're ever going to have caddying. I knew that this was going to be just an absolute blast of the And I sensed it in him. I could just feel in how he was breathing the words that he said. And if there was anyone doubting him in that moment, the next hole of par three, just shy of 200 yards, he hits his tee shot. Watch him walk after it. He almost makes an ace. Birdie tied with Kuchar at eight under. The 15th, the par five, he gets on in two. Kuchar makes birdie from the sand. Pretty good. Spieth has this eagle look from about 50 feet and does Now he's electric. No matter who you are, you can feel it. He yells, go get that to Greller. And that quickly he's leading again, up by one on Kuchar. Nine years later, he still get goosebumps. And Spieth knew it too. He said later that the thought he had at that moment was just get on the green somehow because they could go in from anywhere now. And they keep coming. 16, the par four. He's 25 feet away for birdie. And this exchange on the world feed broadcast is priceless. It's my favorite. And it happens a minute before he attempts the putt. Can't hold another one, can he? Yep. I think he can too. He's Harry Potter. He is. He's magic. And I hate to keep relying on the British announcers, but again, I think this is perfect. What can you say? Just the resilience this young man has shown in the last hour is beyond belief. Absolutely magnificent, son. You are a legend. We're on to 17, another par five. He's up by two now, almost holds this chip. Kuchar does well to make his birdie. But at this point, if you think Spieth is missing this putt, my friend, you have been smoking the course. When it goes in, he has followed up that insane bogey on 13 by going birdie, eagle, birdie, birdie. And it's over. Yes, they have one hole to play. Kuchar ends up making bogey. Spieth pars to win by three. But Spieth has bulldozed him. It is a complete lightning strike. Kuchar didn't do anything wrong except meet the wrong man on the wrong day. It was spectacular. And it leads to some wild thoughts. Let's go right to the most extreme. Roger Maltby speaking to David Faraday off air that day, he said, you know, it's a little known fact that God had two sons. It just took the other one a little longer to come back. And look, maybe Spieth is not the chosen one. But all these years later, you look at this round, how stagnant he was through the first 12 holes, two over par, losing the lead. And it's impossible not to think that somehow, some way he came alive on number 13. Greller knew it. He said he felt like he needed to breathe confidence into Spieth, that there was something off with him. But after 13, it was just inevitable. There's a quote by Hunter S. Thompson I've always loved. When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. On Sunday at Berkdale, Spieth had been thrown into the fire, into something almost unreal, something foreign and strange. And instead of rattling or breaking him, it centered him. And then it launched him. And once he was gone, there was nobody else on the course that mattered. There was nothing that could stop him. And everything that came next was between him and history.