It was the kind of day for which Jordan Spieth has been both lionized and criticized, the ups and downs of tournament golf all packaged together in a single round.
A 2-under-par 70 at TPC Sawgrass seems ordinary enough but very little about the way Spieth plays ever comes off so simple.
He had two eagles, a double bogey, three birdies and three bogeys in his first round of the Players Championship to finish four strokes behind early leader Lucas Glover on a day that could have gone either way.
Eagles fly in the mornings at TPC Sawgrass 🦅@JordanSpieth with a birdie-eagle start to take an early solo lead @THEPLAYERS. pic.twitter.com/gwQjKnWsXf
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) March 13, 2025
Make that TWO eagle hole-outs for @JordanSpieth! ✌️
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) March 13, 2025
📺 @PGATOURLIVE pic.twitter.com/MhtOLJdb9h
Spieth, 31, is still on the way back from offseason wrist surgery that didn’t see him return to the PGA Tour until early February. So there is some ground to make up.
But Thursday’s opening Players round was more of a midseason type of round for Spieth.
“I’m obviously very aware of what I’m doing,” Spieth said. “Feel like I’d like it to be boring, and then I’m still in a position right now where I’m still not at the place I want to be and just trying to work my way there.
“So when that happens there’s going to be volatility. I don’t feel super tight yet, but I do feel like I’m on the right path and I’ve had a number of tournaments where I’ve played boring towards the end and I’ve had plenty where there's volatility too.
“This time it wasn’t from making a dumb mistake. I made a bad swing. So sometimes—that’s O.K. A lot of the times when it happens it’s when I’m trying to do too much, and that’s when I’m aware of it and that’s the most frustrating one. Bad swing, you go learn how to make better swings.”
Spieth wasn’t complaining.
“You like to see that there’s firepower,” he said. “If I made 16 pars and two birdies, I would be like, ‘Oh, what do I need to do to make more birdies?’ But if it was from hitting every green to 15 feet and you hit good putts, then you know it’s coming. So sometimes it’s easier to get rid of bogeys when you know you’re going to make enough birdies.
“But it kind of depends on how it’s done. Ideally I’m hitting more greens in regulation because it is very challenging around the greens here.”
In his fifth start since returning, Spieth continues to work through some of the issues that saw him struggle for a good bit of 2024, eventually leading to surgery on his wrist that he had put off while trying to playing with the pain.
Ranked 65th in the Official World Golf Ranking, the three-time major champion has won just twice since 2017. He had just three top-10 finishes last year and none after a tie for 10th at the Valero Texas Open, the week prior to the Masters.
In his four previous starts, Spieth has shown flashes of form, with two top 10s including a fourth-place finish at the WM Phoenix Open. He tied for ninth two weeks ago at the Cognizant Classic.
Spieth, because he didn’t finish among the top 50 in FedEx Cup points last year—his season ended after the first playoff event at the FedEx St. Jude Championship—was not eligible for last week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational.
He didn’t receive a sponsor exemption, which was somewhat surprising given his popularity and caused him to utter: “I guess I needed to play better injured.”
On Thursday, Spieth wasn’t lamenting the lack of an invite, saying simply he needed to play his way into the event. He’s also scheduled to play next week’s Valspar Championship.
So far, he’s not quite comfortable and said he won’t be until “I stand over it and I’m not trying to avoid things.
“Instead I’m picking a target and I'm very confident it’s going to start on that target and move to where I want it. So pretty much where most ever these guys are playing from, I would like to get there.
“I’m doing a really good job of battling it. I had to kind of rebuild stuff from a few months of nothing, and it wasn’t like I was coming back to something that was already great right before. I was in some really bad habits for a year and a half.
“So it just takes maybe double the balls that I hit prior, and my wrist feels really good this week, I’m very excited about that, so that allows me to feel like I can go out right now and push it a bit, when I couldn’t the first few weeks, first few events of the season.”
Spieth has an odd history with TPC Sawgrass, where in his first appearance in 2014, he contended and tied for fourth.
Since then, in nine appearances, he’s missed the cut six times, including last year. His best finish was a tie for 19th two years ago.
He isn’t making it any easier on himself by hitting just five fairways and eight greens in regulation. He holed out from a bunker at the par-5 11th—his second hole—for his first eagle and then made another eagle at the par-5 16th.
“ I got off to a dream start, and then I just wasn’t very tight off the tee today, and out here eventually that will hurt you,” he said.
“But I battled really well on my second nine. Posting 2-under when out here a lot of times for me when I’m a little off I’ve shot over par in the first round and really feel behind. Been driving the ball pretty well. Today was not one of those days, so I’ll go try to tighten it up and hit more fairways tomorrow.”
This article was originally published on www.si.com as At Players Championship, Jordan Spieth Shows a Return to Form: 'I Can Push It a Bit'.
