‘I’ve never faced anything like this’

As with Rory McIlroy’s next big win, Jordan Spieth’s next win of any kind you feel close — yet so far away.

Spieth’s last PGA Tour victory came 28 months ago at the RBC Heritage in Harbor Town. The two-plus years since have been marked by high numbers (T4 at the 2023 Masters; another close win at the RBC; his usual short-game wizardry); lows (14 missed cuts and disqualifications); swing changes (his face is more closed up than in his 2015 debut, Brandel Chamblee’s adjustment in January was one of the most confusing things I think I’ve seen since I’ve been in this chair. 20 years); and, perhaps most consequentially, nagging issues with his left arm and wrist that he has battled to varying degrees since breaking a bone in his left hand in 2018, an injury he later admitted he never fully recovered from.

For years, Spieth didn’t talk much about his condition; he was reluctant to use it as an excuse. But over time the problems that came with it became impossible to ignore. In May 2023, Spieth withdrew from the Byron Nelson, in his hometown of Dallas, citing severe pain in his left wrist. He played in the PGA Championship at Oak Hill a week later but still wasn’t ready.

In October of that year, after the Ryder Cup, Spieth injured his wrist again while lifting a toaster at his home. “There was nothing I did when I was hurting that should have caused what happened,” Spieth said a month after the two spats. After several tests, doctors discovered that he had ulnar nerve damage. Finally, some medical clarity. “It makes me think, sitting on top of this I can do structurally what I need to do to be at the top level,” Spieth said at the time.

Spieth spent the offseason trying to heal, receiving physical therapy up to four times a week. At the first event of the 2024 season, The Sentry, Spieth was asked how his wrist was feeling. “Good,” he said. “It’s not so much the wrist, it’s more like going up the arm and handling that. The wrist was just a type that took away some of the ulnar nerve. ” He added, “I would say from December onwards it was really strong, I was on the right track.”

And yet the wrist continued to plague him – and his game.

After a promising start to the season (3rd in Maui, T6 in Phoenix), Spieth began to struggle, losing cuts at the Players, Valspar and Masters. A week after the Masters, at RBC, Spieth explained his injury AP like a “get-out-and-go thing,” he added, “I could twist the wrong way off the floor, and I couldn’t play tomorrow.” But I can play the next day.” He added, “the ulnar side of the wrist is difficult to heal.”

In Spieth’s 11 starts since the Masters, he has yet to post a top-20 finish. He dropped to 39th in the world and 63rd in the 2024 FedEx Cup, as he prepares this week to play in the final regular-season event of the year, the Wyndham Championship, in Greensboro, NC Spieth is statistically guaranteed a spot in the FedEx top 70 to advance to the first round of the playoffs in Memphis, but will need a strong finish there to move up to the top 50 to advance to the second playoff event, the BMW Championship, and punch their ticket to next season’s championship. Signature Events. For a player who won three majors before he was 24 years old, Spieth is in serious danger over the next two weeks.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Spieth, now 31, said Tuesday in Greensboro when asked about his wrist, “but knowingly it’s hard not to look at the numbers and think this is not just a fluke.”

Spieth’s driving has been excellent this season — he’s 14th on Tour in SG: Off-the-Tee — but his other stats paint a grim picture. He’s 80 in SG: Putting; 88th place in SG: Around the Green (a category in which he often excels); and a terrific 119th in SG: Approach the Green. “It’s been a frustrating year because it’s probably been my best driving year, and then the clubs that I’ve played the most, which are usually my bread and butter, come out well,” he said.

Spieth’s friend Smylie Kaufman, an analyst for NBC Sports, is of the opinion that perhaps Spieth’s long-distance pursuit has had a negative impact on his iron game. “When you make game changes, you start hitting it harder,” Kaufman said recently on Subpar GOLF. “Sometimes there’s a driver swing that guys have and sometimes there’s an iron swing that guys have. And I think you’re a little bit caught in the middle.”

Meanwhile, Spieth’s search for more answers about his wrist continues. More testing. More scans. Further consultation with a doctor. All of this led him to the conclusion, he said, that he might have to undergo some type of surgery this offseason. In the meantime, he said, “I will pretend that nothing happened, trust me fully, as I will be able to fix it.” Spieth said he is still not sure “what I’m going to do and where I’m going to do it, but unfortunately something has to be done.” And I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

That’s the mysterious thing about his injury: It rarely happens when he plays or practices, he said. “It’s all come out on the golf course — little weird things where my tendon will pop, sublux or pop out of the hole and I have to put it back or I won’t be able to hold the club,” he said.

He added, “I don’t have pain until it subsides, then I have a lot of pain until it comes back.”

And those awkward moments, he said, happen every week or two.

Even if the muscle doesn’t bother him on the road, though, doesn’t it make sense that the anticipation of an injury might affect him unconsciously? Spieth didn’t write off the possibility but also couldn’t comment with any certainty. “It’s very difficult to measure whether it makes a difference,” he said.

All Spieth can do now is to play hard in the next two weeks, which he hopes will lead to the start of the second round of the playoffs followed by the third in the Tour Championship. After that he can turn his attention back to fixing his body.

“I like to think hopefully I have 10 to 15 years of fitness and my best golf left,” he said, “so I’ll be optimistic about the process.”

Alan Bastable

Golf.com Editor

As editor-in-chief of GOLF.com, Bastable is responsible for the editorial direction and voice of one of the game’s most respected and heavily trafficked news and services outlets. He wears many hats – planning, writing, imagining, developing, dreaming up one day he breaks 80 – and feels privileged to work with an insanely smart and hard-working team of writers, editors and producers. Before taking over GOLF.com, he was the features editor at GOLF Magazine. A graduate of the University of Richmond and the Columbia School of Journalism, he lives in New Jersey with his wife and four children.