Jordan Spieth’s 7 stages of Masters grief

Jordan Spieth has played the Masters three times, as a 20-, 21-, and 22-year old. He has finished second, first, and second. There has not been a more consistently great Masters player at his age in the history of the event. His run at Augusta National has been remarkable.

But when Spieth is in contention on Sunday this year, the viewing public won’t be thinking about his 2015 win, or what felt like a Cinderella run to finish second the year before that. People will be thinking about what happened at Augusta last year, when a back-nine collapse on Sunday cost the then-22-year-old wunderkind his second green jacket. What Spieth himself will be thinking, only he knows.

Spieth is a 23-year-old millionaire and one of the best golfers in the world. It has been a long year of waiting for his return to the scene of one of the great public implosions in a career. Spieth’s public feelings towards the debacle have evolved as time has distanced him from it. Here’s how he has dealt with his Masters grief, in stages.

Spieth’s Sunday woes last year began, in earnest, on Augusta’s back nine. He carded a 4-under 32 on the front nine, and had a commanding lead on the field. Then he stumbled on the par-4 10th and 11th holes, bogeying both. The oil was already leaking before the great unraveling.

The came the 12th, where the tournament came apart.

On the par-3 12th, Spieth’s tee shot came up short, landed on a downslope, and hopped into Rae’s Creek. He then took a drop and hit a fat wedge that splashed straight in. Spieth settled for a quadruple-bogey 7 and lost his lead to Danny Willett.

Spieth recovered after that, with two birdies to one bogey on the last six holes, but it wasn’t enough. He finished second, three shots back of Willett.

Throughout those final holes, Spieth, as you would expect, wore the look of the damned.

At his post-round press availability, Spieth explained an interaction he had on the course with his caddie, Michael Greller:

At one point I told Mike, I said, buddy, it seems like we’re collapsing. And I wanted to be brutally honest with the way I felt towards him, so that he could respond with what was necessary to get us to rebound. And we did. I rebounded. I hit a great drive, I hit a good 7‑iron, got a tough break. I made two birdies coming in and almost made a couple more.

But, boy, you wonder about not only just the tee shot on 12, but why can’t you just control the second shot, you know, and make 5 at worse, and you’re still tied for the lead.

Big picture, this one will hurt. It will take a while.

Spieth has been a media darling and fan favorite for the entirety of his young career. He comes across as kind, smart, and prodigious. But Spieth was emotionally blitzed after finishing out his Sunday round last year.

As he walked from the 18th green to the clubhouse, a CBS camera followed him. Spieth stopped, used his scorecard to cover his face. “Just not in the face,” he said.

This was not the polished Spieth everyone was used to seeing in public. How could it be? He had just been through a wringer of his own making on national TV.

In early May, Spieth sounded like he had come to grips with what happened. He wasn’t acting like he didn’t think about it, but he sounded fine:

It was 80 percent, 75 percent you have to do it yourself; and then 25 percent relying on my team, family, friends. And then mentors, messages I get from mentors, pretty much saying, hey, you’ve been in contention six out of the last eight majors, won a couple of them. Something like that; the wrong miss at the wrong time is bound to happen at some point. Whether you still win that major not.

I had the same exact miss at the U.S. Open last year. On 17 I made double-bogey and kind of squeaked it out at the end, but that was potentially the same kind of experience as the Masters. You’re going to be on the good end and bad end.

If you’re in it enough, you’re going to be on the good end and bad end of those situations, so keep putting ourselves in contention, and when we’re on the good end again, I’ll be able to enjoy it even more having experienced the other side of it.

Defeat only makes victory sweeter, Spieth suggested. He seemed to have convinced himself that everything was going to work out.

“I’m not taking it very hard,” he said. “I’ve got ladies at the grocery stores putting their hand on me and going, ‘Really praying for you. How are you doing?’ I’m like, ‘My dog didn’t die. I’ll be OK. I’ll survive.’ It happens. I laugh about it now. I really do. But it keeps coming up, and I understand that.

“I’ll move on. If you’re in contention at a major, say, 50 times in your career, something like that is going to happen. Just don’t let it happen again.”

At The Players Championship last year, a little later in May, Spieth said he’d put Augusta behind him. He thought people were done talking about it. But this was his first event since late Sunday at The Masters and damn near every question was about that finish. The Players Championship might as well not have existed in that press conference.

At this point I don’t think people feel sorry for me. It’s the nature of the game. There’s a lot of people who were very happy the way it turned out, people that are fans of Danny, close to him. Again, he earned it. No, I’m not — I think in the first couple weeks after, but now that golf has been going on for a while, and we’ll have big events coming up, they’re very difficult to win.

It’s not like winning is easy. I don’t have another win coming my way in my career necessarily. You have to earn it. That’ll certainly be nice for me, to close one down the stretch, just like any time — 2014 was a rough year. I came — I was close in a lot of events, and I didn’t finish them off. It wasn’t maybe to the extent that — it wasn’t the Masters. But they were PGA TOUR events that took me until that off-season to start the train.

But I think people have moved on already, at least I thought so until I came in here today.

He insisted this wasn’t an issue.

I’ll just tell you that I’m not affected by it. Again, it was the wrong miss at the wrong time. Yeah, I mean, if I hit a good shot and it catches a gust and goes in the water, it’s not because of the Masters. It’s not something that was in my head, or if I put a bad swing on it. Again, Augusta seems like a long time ago now, to me. This was a complete new week.

Later in May, Spieth got his first post-Masters win at the Dean & DeLuca Invitational at Colonial in Texas. Masters-related heckling, he said during the tournament, had irked him.

You know, I knew it would be somewhat difficult to come back from what happened at the Masters. I knew that that was — I don’t wish that upon anybody. I mean, it was not fun to experience. It’s not fun to hear people in the crowd walking down today yelling out, “Remember the Masters.” That’s just what you hear.

After his victory:

The nerves hit me more than I think they should have or normally would just from the start of the round on today, and that’s probably it. Paul Tesori came over on 18 green after I had made the putt, and he said, you heard that guy on 10, didn’t you, and I did. Someone yelling out from the crowd, “remember the Masters, Jordan, remember the Masters.” Whether he was being positive or negative, I’m not sure, like remember, like get it back because of it, or remember what you did. Either way, there’s a little red-ass in me, and it came out on the next few holes.

Around the New Year, Spieth went back to Augusta. It’s common practice for Masters champions to drop in at non-tournament times during the year. It’s a lifelong perk and sometimes it’s good to just go to the course with friends or family when the stakes aren’t incredibly high and the pressure of the Masters is not overwhelming the place.

Spieth played with Augusta members, and he spent most of his round working from the members’ tees, not the ones used in the Masters. But he teed off from the standard spot on No. 12, the site of his disaster on Sunday last year.

It went really well.

I went there and played there in December. First time back. I was very nervous when I got on 12 tee, and I hit an 8-iron over the bunker to about 15 feet. Greens were a little slower, and I left a lot of putts short.

In the group, I was like, there was no chance I was leaving this short and I hit this putt to about 15, 18 feet. I was pumped to hit the green, and then I hit my putt and it just about stopped short on the front lip and fell in for two. I probably gave like a big fist pump. I was walking around with my hands up, like demon’s gone.

And I went back the next day. We played it the next morning and I hit a 9-iron this time to a left pin, and it landed about three feet beyond the hole and it was really, really soft, and it sucked back and almost went in, right on the lip to about this far. So I got two twos out of No. 12 the first time back. Last two times I played the hole, I made birdie.

Spieth’s had a strong start to the 2017 season. He missed the cut at his last pre-Masters event, the Shell Houston Open, but has a Pebble Peach win and three other top-10s in his eight starts to date. He is slotted as the No. 6 player in the World Golf Ranking, and he would shoot up close to No. 1 if he redeems himself this weekend.

Spieth might not do it. There are 94 players in the field, and he’ll have to beat Dustin Johnson, Rory McIlroy, Jason Day, Jon Rahm, and everybody else. But a year after the biggest disaster of his career, Spieth looks well positioned not to repeat it. At his pre-tournament presser on Tuesday, Spieth focused on giving himself another chance.

“I hope to have the opportunities that I had the last three years, and that’s what I’m going for,” he said. “I’m very proud of the way I’ve played every single round I’ve played here. I fought very hard at the end, and that’s something that we always do.”