In making a quadruple bogey at the 12th at Augusta last Sunday, did Jordan Spieth choke, or was it as he said, that he put a couple of bad swings on the ball at the wrong time?
Mental collapse: Jordan Spieth (left) and caddie Michael Greller after the final round of the US Masters. Photo: Getty Images
In making a quadruple bogey at the 12th at Augusta last Sunday, did Jordan Spieth choke, or was it as he said, that he put a couple of bad swings on the ball at the wrong time? Is there a difference?
"It depends on what you think a 'choke' is," says golfer and writer Mike Clayton, "but you would have to say it was a mental collapse." Spieth did say it, as he walked to the 13th, muttering to caddie Michael Greller: "I think we're collapsing here." By articulating it, Spieth seemed to be dealing with it in the moment, as the most famous chokers from history do not.
"I personally would never call Jordan Spieth a choker," says Noel Blundell, a sports psychologist who works predominantly with elite golfers. "He's as mentally tough as anyone out there. He's as tough as anyone who has played the game." Blundell says Spieth does not have in his golf game a Tiger Woods or Greg Norman style advantage over the rest of the field, yet he beats most of them most times. That's mental toughness.
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"But everyone is vulnerable at some stage," says Blundell. Coming to the 12th, Spieth was. He had played brilliantly on the front nine to hold a lead of five, but bogeys at 10 and 11 had trimmed it.
A little kink had appeared in his swing on short holes, making for an unintended trajectory. It was invisible to most amateur eyes, but Clayton could see it. "He was struggling all week with his swing and fighting the right shot – which is what he hit on 12," he says.
Spieth was caught in a cross current. Two bogeys had put him on edge. He should have reminded himself that he was still leading the Masters, he said. But on another channel, he was aware that par all the way would be enough. "I got too conservative," he said. "I put weak swings on three holes in a row." This is all from an interview minutes after walking off the 18th, remarkable for Spieth's temper and self-awareness. Never can there have been a more level-headed choker.
But Blundell could see something else out there. Instead of sizing up his shots from a distance, surveying the landscape and swinging the club, Spieth does all his "mental work" once he has addressed the ball. It makes for a long, tense prelude. It reminded Blundell of the agonising of Norman at Augusta in 1996, the most famous choke of all.
Blundell describes this routine as "inherently dangerous". "You can get away with it if you're playing well," he says. But a faltering finish to the third round suggested to Blundell that Spieth might not have been playing quite well enough.
This was not Albert Park on a Wednesday afternoon. This was the back nine at Augusta on Sunday. This was the 12th, described thus in 1990 by Sports Illustrated's Ricky Reilly: "It's a hole you play with a seven iron, a sand wedge and eight weeks of scuba lessons." All the greats had blundered here at some stage.
Now Spieth did, with two ungainly hacks at the ball — the second excavating a hole in which Gina Rinehart might invest — and hitting into the water twice. Intoned a commentator: "The iron man ... " The way his voice trailed off said it all.
"He had to know it was a simple shot across the middle of the bunker and he hit a big block," says Clayton. "The pitch is a tough shot but he made an awful attempt at it." In review, Spieth regretted not retreating to the drop zone, where at least he knew the yardages. Then with his third swing, he hit into a bunker anyway. What Blundell calls Spieth's "neurological wiring", his great strength, shorted.
So seven it was, and forfeit of the Masters, too. But was it a choke? It wasn't that the Masters suddenly became too big for him; he won the tournament last year. Nor was he weighed down by a fear that this moment might not come again. He is 22, an age when most don't have a game together enough to begin to fall apart. It wasn't a long, slow, grim bleeding to death, possessed by ever more devils, either adding to a tragic history or foreshadowing one, as it was for Norman. It was hard viewing, but not macabre. Spieth's demeanour afterwards and in the days since was sombre, but did not for a minute intimate that something in him was broken.
It was over quickly. Blundell notes Spieth's peerless record of bouncing back. After his worst round this year, a 79 at the Northern Trust Open, he shot 68 the next day. At Augusta, he made birdies at 13 and 15, and although they weren't enough to salvage the tournament, they were enough to consign the 12th to ruled-off history.
"Really it was a one-hole disaster," says Clayton. "In his defence, he led the whole way on a brutal course played under brutal conditions. He shouldered all the pressure. The rest just sat on him hoping he would falter."
Against all indications, he did. Technically, he choked. Viscerally, it felt like something more than a hiccup, but less than a full-scale gasping, gagging self-strangulation. Let's call it a gulp and do as Spieth already appears to have done, leave it at that.