PGA Championship: Jordan Spieth Targets Career Grand Slam

TULSA, Okla. — Sixteen months ago, Jordan Spieth spent long hours at post-tour press conferences answering questions about what his problem was.

Or what’s missing from the once prized game of golf.

The world’s top-ranked male player for most of 2015-16, and three major titles in roughly the same period, Spieth had dropped to 92nd in the world rankings by January last year. His best finish in a 2020 major was a draw in 46th place.

During this time, Spieth handled the nearly weekly inquisition about whether he could ever regain his form with composure and candor. He mostly kept his smile. But that smile is much wider now. Spieth is back in the top 10 worldwide, with a rally that included a runner-up at the British Open in 2021 and a promotion this year that included his 13th PGA Tour victories and two runners-up.

On Wednesday, the day before the first round of the 2022 PGA Championship, Spieth met with reporters and happily spent most of his time this week answering questions about whether he could reach the golf immortality benchmark.

Only five golfers – Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods – have won each of the game’s major championships. With victories at the Masters, US Open and British Open, 28-year-old Spieth only needs a PGA Championship title to join this gilded group.

“The elephant in the room for me,” Spieth said Wednesday with a small grin. “If you told me I was going to win a tournament for the rest of my life, I would say I wanted to win it. In the long run, it would be really cool to say that you’ve hit all four of the world’s greatest golf tournaments, played in different parts of the world and in different styles. So when you win a career Grand Slam, you feel like you’re doing well in golf. ”

Successful golf? Like proficient? It’s an almost heavenly ambition in a sport that relentlessly grounds almost all of its devotees on a regular basis. But Spieth can be forgiven. He endured months muttering to himself as he descended from his shirt on the high bumpy road when his game crashed into the abyss. And no golfer mutters to himself so systematically, even professionally, with the frenzied enthusiasm Spieth displays.

Even as the golf ball was now straight and sailing farther, Spieth didn’t budge from his frequent comments on the golf course, his always patient friend, former sixth-grade math teacher Michael Greller, nodding silently as he walked alongside his boss.

Given Spieth’s active brain (and mouth), Greller’s role should not be underestimated. Spieth agreed to Wednesday.

“I’m really trying to have a little more fun and Michael is doing a good job at it,” Spieth said. “If I wake up a little bit tomorrow on the wrong side of the bed, he will try to talk to me about something other than golf, as we all do. He will step in and having a friend who can keep the bag light can sometimes turn things that way.”

Spieth will be tested in other ways in Thursday’s first round. He’ll be playing Woods and four-time major champion Rory McIlroy, whose group will follow nearly 70 percent of the tens of thousands of fans at Southern Hills Country Club. The atmosphere will recharge and it will be like a louder, chaotic, ever-moving wave, as a golf gallery doesn’t sit like other sporting events.

But Spieth, whose wife Annie gave birth to the couple’s first child, Sammy, in November, had a different approach.

“I’m going to tell my kid about this one day – I need to play major with Tiger,” Spieth said.

He added that he had done this before, but while admitting that Woods had a near-fatal car accident in February 2021, he added, “Last year, you weren’t sure if that would happen again.”

Spieth acknowledged that large crowds can be a distraction, but he’s used to it. When he nearly won the Masters at the age of 20 and finished first in the tournament a year later, in 2015, Spieth drew some huge crowds.

“Sometimes, when the crowd gets big enough, it’s just a blur of color somehow,” he said. “But it’s great to play with Tiger and Rory. They’re fast. They are positive. I think you should embrace it and accept that it’s great and it’s absolutely great for golf.”

It might even be a boon to group up as a way of forgetting the big championships’ opportunity to get the career Grand Slam, Spieth said.

“I think if I can play well the next few days, given the crowds that will be there, then the weekend can actually feel like a bit of a breather in a way,” he said. “So that’s how I look.”