Jordan Spieth misses The Players cut in his 1st start since Masters meltdown

Jordan Spieth said there would be moments of rust after taking one of the longest breaks of his career. The easy thing, of course, will be to blame that ignominious implosion at the Masters for leaving some sort of scar tissue. It’s a facile leap.

Despite going to the back nine on Sunday at the Masters with the lead, Spieth has not been particularly sharp all season long and he wasn’t this week with a missed cut at The Players. He also does not have some long record of lighting up TPC Sawgrass, going quietly last year and missing the cut. It’s also probably not the best place to come in cold after a long layoff, one he likened to an offseason of sorts after a manic globetrotting first quarter of 2016. It’s uncomfortable, maybe, to watch the best player of the past year miss a cut but this was not especially shocking and not because of some mental after effects of the Masters.

Playing alongside Jason Day, the current No. 1 player in the world, cannot be easy, either. Day is a machine right now and hits it to places that Spieth simply can’t off the tee. While Spieth was the 2015 Player of the Year, there’s no real argument for who has been the best in the world since last August. Day’s the clear-cut titleholder there and now he’s carving up the “fifth major” on a course that was supposed to mitigate that advantage off the tee and where he’s missed more cuts than he’s made.

Spieth was probably not entertaining any notion of catching Day when he showed up to finish his second round on Saturday morning. Day is running away with things and will hold the largest 36-hole lead in the event’s history with a new midpoint scoring mark of 15-under. But Spieth did have a golden opportunity to at least make the cut and get 36 more holes in his first start since that Masters mess.

Spieth, however, was sloppy from the start on Saturday. He walked off the course on Friday night with his ball off the 15th fairway and hit a poor punch out recovery shot to start his Saturday morning. He needed four shots from inside 120 yards to start the day, and left the 15th with an ugly bogey to start his day.

That meant he had to grind out two birdies in his last four holes to make the cut. The par-5 16th hole was a prime opportunity to pick up a red number and make a run above the cut line but again, Spieth threw away the chance with a fat approach shot short of the green. The frustration from Thursday and Friday carried over to Saturday morning, and that shot resulted in disappointing par.

That quick two-hole sequence made it clear Spieth’s Saturday morning stay at Sawgrass would be short. Now he’s headed back to Texas early but will tee it up again next week at his hometown event, the Byron Nelson. This is now Spieth’s 14th missed cut on the PGA Tour, one shy of the total number of Tiger Woods’ career. This was not some psychological damage from Augusta, but well within the range of expectations for Spieth after a long layoff in a season where he’s not been at his absolute best, especially up around and on the green.