Jordan Spieth’s Masters joins the list of worst major championship meltdowns

When Jordan Spieth made the turn Sunday at Augusta with a five-shot advantage over Danny Willett, the golf world had already crowned him the first player to go wire-to-wire in two consecutive majors.

After four straight birdies leading up to the 10th hole, Spieth was well on his way to joining Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus and Nick Faldo in an elite club of just four players ever to win two straight Masters. There was a slew of other marks to match or set as well.

On a cruise toward his date with destiny, however, Spieth’s hopes for a second green jacket nosedived into Rae’s Creek in one of the most sudden collapses in golf history.

“Big picture, this one will hurt,” a shell-shocked Spieth said Sunday after the disastrous double-dunk, quad-bogey 7 on the par-3 12th hole ended in a tie for second place. “It will take a while.”

Destined to be forgotten in the aftermath of Spieth’s devastation will be how he putted the eyes out of the ball all week while fighting a sketchy swing, as well as the tenacity with which he almost clawed his way back into contention after the holy mess at No. 12. Birdies on 13 and 15 ignited hope among Spieth partisans, but a bogey-par finish put an end to any comeback chances for the 22-year-old two-time major winner.

“Very cool what the patrons here did for me,” Spieth said. “And they almost brought me back into it.”

But that’s what happens when the collar tightens on an athlete in any sport -- the good (and there was plenty of it before the implosion at No. 12) gets swept away by the bad and the ugly.

Just ask Jean van de Velde, Greg Norman, Phil Mickelson, Adam Scott or Rory McIlroy.

McIlroy, who has been besieged by the six inches between his ears for some time, admitted on Sunday that until he can get past the psychic obstacles that Augusta National poses, he will never win a Masters and complete his career grand slam.

“Once I overcome that mental hurdle that I’m struggling with at the minute, then I know how to play this course,” said McIlroy, who finished T10 on Sunday. “I’ve played this course very well before, and I can string good rounds together here, but it’s just a matter of doing it.”

Spieth conceded he would not soon get over his epic crash, which evoked every soul-crushing major washout in the game’s history. There was Norman’s cringe-worthy loss to Faldo in the 1996 Masters, Arnold Palmer’s blown seven-shot lead at the 1966 U.S. Open, van de Velde’s splashdown on the last hole of the 1999 British Open and Mickelson’s 72nd-hole debacle in the 2006 U.S. Open.

Spieth’s flop seems even worse than McIlroy’s back-nine fold in 2011, but maybe that’s because it’s so fresh and raw. We also have hindsight to help us remember how McIlroy overcame adversity after his Masters implosion.

We also know that Norman’s failure cemented his reputation as someone who could not finish the job when the pressure was on.

“This was shocking because [Spieth] was in total control,” Faldo told a group of reporters. “Greg, right from word go, was on a downward trend and Jordan was on an upward trend.”

Norman never earned a green jacket and Palmer, with seven majors to his name, failed to win another one after his 1966 downfall. Van de Velde won one European Tour event after his Carnoustie breakdown but his obit will likely begin, “French golfer known for his dramatic loss at the 1999 Open Championship.”

On the other hand, Mickelson earned two of his five majors (2010 Masters and 2013 British Open) following his 2006 Winged Foot nightmare and Scott won the 2013 Masters after throwing away the lead at the British Open just months earlier.

McIlroy famously dusted himself off after losing his 54-hole lead at the Masters and went on to blow out the field at the 2011 U.S. Open two months later. He has since added two PGA Championships (2012, 2014) and an Open Championship (2014) to his resume.

What only the future will reveal is whether Spieth can put behind him his catastrophic Masters Sunday and mount a return to competition with a newfound determination to bounce back from the depths of despair and reascend to the heights of the game.

For sure, the odds makers are on his side. Hours after his Masters meltdown, Golfodds.com made Spieth a 7-1 favorite to defend his U.S. Open title in June at Oakmont Country Club. All is well and good for the player who was the wiseguys’ pick to win at Augusta, but as last week so stunningly proved, anything can happen on any given Sunday.

“He was on the steps of joining our little club, which would have been great,” Faldo said. “The only good news is, you’re 22, you regroup, you’re too talented. He has a lot of majors to have a shot at.”