By DAVE SKRETTA AP Sports Writer
AUGUSTA, Ga. — Jordan Spieth was caught in such a whirlwind after winning the Masters eight years ago, whether it was winging his way to New York for television appearances or throwing out the first pitch at a Texas Rangers game, that he never bothered to find a tailor for his green jacket.
Leave it to Augusta National, where every piece of the property is finely tailored, to take care of such details.
“I just had it everywhere and I never got it fixed,” Spieth said Monday, “and I think they have done it since here, because the arms certainly fit a lot better. I left a little room just in case I put on a few pounds over the years.”
That’s some forward-thinking.
Of course, a better solution would be to keep winning new ones.
There was a time when that seemed inevitable. Spieth was just 21 back in 2015, when he became the first wire-to-wire Masters champion since Ray Floyd nearly four decades earlier, tying Tiger Woods’ then-record of 18 under along the way. He went on to win the U.S. Open that summer, and everything portended greatness for a kid who fell in love with the game watching the Masters on TV and then racing out to the chipping green at Brookhaven Country Club.
Spieth kept winning, of course. Prestigious monuments, too, like the Tour Championship that fall and the Tournament of Champions the following January. A year later, Spieth won his third major at the British Open at Royal Birkdale.
Yet winning a second green jacket has been an exercise not in futility so much as frustration.
In 2016, he led from the first round until the back nine on Sunday, when he blew a five-shot lead by losing six shots to par over the first three holes. The coup de grace came at No. 12, the picturesque par-3 over Rae’s Creek in the back corner of the property, where Spieth hit not just his approach into the water but his next shot as well.
It was perhaps the lowest Spieth has ever felt at Augusta National, on the lowest spot on the course. The quadruple bogey cleared the way for Danny Willett, whose bogey-free final round earned him a green jacket instead.
In 2018, Spieth again led after the first round before fading on Friday and Saturday, and only a blistering final-round 64 got him within two shots of winner Patrick Reed. He matched that third-place finish with another two years ago, when he hung around the first page of the leaderboard but never threatened winner Hideki Matsuyama.
“When I look back on the times where I’ve had real legitimate chances, I look at the middle two rounds of 2018 – I really could have, should have won it that year,” Spieth said. “Like, I’ve backdoored some of those top finishes, and I’d love to get in the mix because I feel like right now, I feel better about my game than I’ve felt since probably 2017.”
It hasn’t been easy to reach this point.
Spieth would go through periods when his swing was out of whack, and his solution was to grind harder, which often led to more problems. So he would back off, and that would lead if not to more problems then at least to different ones.
“I tried working really, really hard without really knowing what I was doing, and I think that put me more in a hole,” he said. “I got to the point where I was like, ‘OK, let’s figure this out. Stop trying the same thing and overworking it, thinking something is going to click and it’s all over.’ Instead, I started to really re-engineer backward what kind of made me so successful.”
It’s been a process, Spieth said, yet the progress was evident last year at Augusta. He was 1 under in his second round, and 1 over for the championship, before a triple bogey at No. 12 – he splashed another shot into Rae’s Creek – and a double bogey at the 18th caused him to miss the cut at the Masters for the first time.
The next week, Spieth won the RBC Heritage in a playoff with Patrick Cantlay.
The good results kept coming, if not the wins: second at the Byron Nelson, top 10 at the British Open at St. Andrews, sixth earlier this year at the Phoenix Open, fourth at Bay Hill and third at the Valspar Championship.
Those results are why oddsmakers put him behind only defending champion Scottie Scheffler, four-time major winner Rory McIlroy – still needing the Masters for his career slam – and major winner Jon Rahm heading into Thursday’s opening round.
And why Spieth would be wise to have a tailor on standby come Sunday.
“It’s exciting,” he said, “because when I go to the range, I’m confident by the end of the day I know what to improve. That seems like it would be standard every day for a golfer, but there were a lot of years in a row where I would go to the course and I would be uncertain if I would come out that day feeling better or worse. That’s tough to go into.”
“You know,” Spieth added, “I don’t feel I have all the weapons right now. But I have enough, and I’m continuing to work on the ones that I don’t have, and I get a little better each day with them.”
LIV’S CAM SMITH HAPPY TO GET HUGS, HANDSHAKES
Cameron Smith returned to the Masters on Monday with a small measure of trepidation, an unusual feeling for someone who has contended two of the last three years and who refers to Augusta National as his “happy place.”
Smith is with LIV Golf, the last big name to defect to the Saudi-funded tour. And having heard so much noise and sensed so much acrimony, he didn’t know what kind of reception he would receive when he walked onto the range.
To his relief, it was the usual dose of hugs and handshakes.
“And it was nice,” Smith said to the largest gathering of the day in the interview room.
The British Open champion was the only LIV golfer on the interview schedule, a courtesy Augusta National affords all the reigning major champions regardless of where they play.
What was he expecting?
“I wasn’t really sure, to be honest,” Smith said. “I was just kind of letting it all happen naturally – went out to the range and did my stuff and yeah, it was just a really nice experience. … There’s a lot of stuff going on at the moment that doesn’t need to be going on, especially in the media. I think it’s definitely wound up a little bit too much.”
This Masters has a full plate of activity, and LIV Golf would appear to be the main course.
Smith has not competed against the best of the PGA Tour since the Tour Championship last August. For the likes of Dustin Johnson, it’s been a little longer.
It didn’t take long for the mix of players from two tours to cause a stir. The practice round tee sheet listed a most tantalizing foursome of Woods, Fred Couples, Tom Kim and Bryson DeChambeau, who complained only last week that Woods had cut him off ever since the former U.S. Open champion went to LIV.
Turns out it was a Masters mix-up. The fourth was Rory McIlroy, the loudest PGA Tour supporter over the last year.
Couples has made his thoughts clear, recently saying at a PGA Tour Champions breakfast in Newport Beach that Phil Mickelson was a “nut bag” and Sergio Garcia a “clown.”
Couples, the 1992 Masters champion and still immensely popular, says he has no personal beef with either and would have no trouble sitting with them at the Masters Club dinner on Tuesday night or playing in the same group.
“I have no problem with any of them,” Couples said. “Just please do not bash a tour that I have 43 years invested in. It bothers the hell out of me. They don’t bother me. They really don’t. They’re golfers. I’m a golfer. I respect them all.”
The Masters typically releases tee times on Tuesday afternoon, and that has become an event to see which LIV players – 18 of them are at the Masters – will be in the same group as PGA Tour loyalists.
Shane Lowry played with two LIV golfers – Mickelson and Louis Oosthuizen – at the U.S. Open last summer. Adam Scott played with Johnson and Marc Leishman at St. Andrews.
“Look, obviously there’s going to be some pairings that are going to be interesting this week,” Lowry said. “I always say this about professional golfers. We all work in the same office. If you work in the same office, you’re not going to like everyone in there. Same way as this. I met Dustin on the range – I always get on well with Dustin. It was good to see him.”
“There’s a lot to hype,” Lowry said. “But if you’re paired with whoever, you don’t really care about what they’re doing. You’re just trying to win the tournament.”
One question about LIV golfers is how much they’re playing, as the new circuit has had only three events in 2023. Smith played five times going into the Masters last year, and he briefly challenged Scheffler until the Texan pulled away to win his first major.
This year he has played four times – the only 72-hole event was the Saudi International on the Asian Tour, where he missed the cut. That was followed by three 54-hole LIV events, the last two finishing out of the top 20.
Smith is not in peak form, which he attributes to a long break at home in Australia during the offseason. But Augusta National tends to bring out the best in him, and he’s hoping the good vibes will lead to a great performance.
If not him, then Smith would love to see another LIV player with a shot at the green jacket.
“I think it’s just important for LIV guys to be up there because I think we need to be up there,” Smith said. “I think there’s a lot of chatter about these guys don’t play real golf, these guys don’t play real golf courses. For sure, I’ll be the first one to say, the fields aren’t as strong. I’m the first one to say that.
“But we’ve still got a lot of guys up there that can play some really serious golf, and we compete against each other hard week-in and week-out and we’re trying to do the same things that we did six months ago.”
Brooks Koepka is coming off a one-shot victory last week in LIV Golf-Orlando, where the greens were crusty and brown and fast. It was played on the Crooked Cat course at Orange County National, where the PGA Tour used to stage Q-school.
Johnson was asked about any similarities between Crooked Cat and Augusta National.
“I don’t think you could have those in the same sentence, other than I played there last week and I’m playing here this week,” Johnson said.
CROWE TAKING FLIGHT
Harrison Crowe was having a couple of pints last summer at The Dunvegan, a pub just around the corner from the Old Course at St. Andrews when a golf podcaster challenged someone to hit a ball off the pavement and onto the 18th green.
That would be over the buildings, across the street and onto the 18th green.
Crowe doesn’t remember how many drinks he had in him. He does remember the shot. With his left foot on the corner of the sidewalk, his right on the street, Crowe took a mighty swing and sent the ball soaring over the buildings.
The video of the successful shot went viral, turning the amateur into something of a celebrity at his first Masters.
“I think hitting that shot just kind of shows the person that I am, that I’m not really afraid to give everything a shot,” Crowe said after a practice round on Monday. “And it kind of shows a little bit more of the Aussie culture a little bit, that we are pretty laid back and we are ready to do things.”
Crowe’s victory at the Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship last year put him in select Aussie company: Adam Scott is back on the 10th anniversary of his Masters triumph, British Open champ Cam Smith is among the favorites, Jason Day is rising through the world rankings now that he’s healthy, and Min Woo Lee is a trendy pick to do well.
“The course is definitely longer than I expected,” Crowe said, “but more so the aura around the players is so mesmerizing. You go down Magnolia Lane, it’s so special. Driving the car down there, it’s a life-changing experience. And then being here today, especially seeing how many people are out there, it’s nerve-wracking. But it’s more so exciting.”
DECHAMBEAU AND AUGUSTA
Bryson DeChambeau was a beefed-up, big-hitting U.S. Open champ when he came to the Masters in November 2020 and called Augusta National a par 67 because of his length. He only broke par two days, and only once did he break 70 – a 69.
“Because of that statement (some people) think I don’t have respect for the course,” DeChambeau said. “Are you kidding me? This is one of the greatest golf courses in the entire world, and if anybody thinks I don’t have respect for the course, they’d better go check out who I actually am because it’s not accurate one bit.”
DeChambeau said he regrets not clarifying that he needed to be at the peak of his game, and that wasn’t the case. And while he said a 67 every day is unlikely to happen, with the distance he was hitting the ball in 2020 it was possible.
“But that’s only with your ‘A’ game, and I should have rephrased that,” he said.
YOUNG SARGENT
Gordon Sargent received a special invitation to play the Masters as the NCAA champion. He’s a sophomore at Vanderbilt but looks even younger, and that made it difficult to get around the grounds when he arrived Sunday.
In fact, a few employees figured he was one of the kids in the Drive, Chip and Putt competition.
“I’m walking around and no one is with me. I don’t even know if I had my badge with me; I think I probably still had it in the car or something,” Sargent said. “I was like, ‘Can I have player dining?’ They’re like, ‘I don’t know. Player?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I know, I’m an amateur or whatever.’ Then thankfully a couple guys from when I came last month from inside remembered me, and they kind of guided me along. But yeah, it was pretty funny.”
“They’re like, ‘Where are your parents? Like, did they send you by yourself?’” Sargent added with a smile. “I was like, ‘No, they’re coming in. I can travel by myself sometimes.’”
HOLE IN ONE
Sepp Straka already has a memorable Masters moment: He aced the par-3 12th during his practice round Monday.
The winner of the Honda Classic a year ago, Straka was playing with Abraham Ancer, J.T. Poston and Chris Kirk and had 155 yards to the hole when he hit an 8-iron over the bunker fronting the green and watched his ball disappear.
Straka won’t get one of the crystal bowls that Augusta National awards players who have a hole-in-one during the Masters; there hasn’t been one of those at No. 12 since Curtis Strange in 1988. But that didn’t seem to bother Straka one bit.
“Every time you come it’s a special event, and then obviously this year, the one thing that’s going to stand out – I don’t think you can top that hole-in-one,” Straka said. “That’ll be a memory I’ll keep forever.”
AP Golf Writer Doug Ferguson contributed to this report.
