Jordan Spieth is the center of the Masters again, for good and bad

As Jordan Spieth tapped in for par some 160 yards away on the other side of Rae’s Creek, his mom clutched her chest with a smirk and let out a loud exhale before turning to walk away from the far corner of the course that wrecked her son’s Masters just a year prior.

It had been a frustrating round in the wind to that point for Spieth, but he navigated Amen Corner in 1-under and had a chance coming into the clubhouse to finish in red numbers and back on the first page of the leaderboard yet again. It was following a recent Spieth pattern at Augusta, a place that he’s made his own in just three years at the Masters. Some spotty ball striking, frustrated mutterings to himself, clutch par saves and a number at the end that lesser talents and Augusta experts could not scratch together. But unfortunately for Spieth and his mother’s stress relief, there are bodies of water at Augusta National after Amen Corner, and he went exploring again. The 15th was another screeching halt that left a massive crowd in one of Augusta’s other famous amphitheaters groaning and murmuring incredulously about what they were watching.

Incomprehensibly, Spieth made another quadruple bogey at Augusta National. It’s the second round in a row with such an ignominious mark and it’s probably a narrative he doesn’t want to hear about but is going to stick — for at least 24 hours, or maybe through this weekend. The difference with this quad, of course, is that he’ll get another round the next day to make it not matter less.

The 15th hole can be one of the easiest on the course at Augusta. Most of the big hitters view it as a legit eagle opportunity and everyone views it as a birdie hole. But it was a different beast on Thursday and the group that came through before Spieth portended as much. Moments before Spieth posted his quad, Brooks Koepka, one of the longest hitters in the game and built like a brick sh**house, laid freaking up at the 15th. It was jarring to see Koepka start addressing his ball with the group ahead still up on the green. But the 15th was playing as a real three-shot hole into this wind on Thursday and Spieth indicated after the round that this was his miscalculation.

“I still thought of it as a birdie hole today and it really isn’t, when you lay up,” Spieth said. “So I didn’t take my medicine. I was stuck in the 15-is-a-birdie-hole mentality and it kind of bit me a little bit.”

The first wedge was from 98 yards and spun back into the water, leaving the crowd uncomfortably moaning and Spieth fuming with his arms crossed over his chest. Needless to say, when you lay up, you can’t also then hit it in the water. He then walked up about 20 yards and blasted the next one way over the green. The pin was tucked in a narrow peninsula but this was some Spieth sloppiness we just don’t see at Augusta ... except for, uh, that one other time he made a quad. The poor wedge shots were compounded by an awful three-putt and just like that, Spieth had a dang 9 on his scorecard.

The crowd was stunned. I was stunned. Spieth walked to the 16th tee and looked back at the scoreboard lording over the 15th and shook his head at the damage that was just done. Then he stuffed it to three feet for a tap-in birdie at the par-3 16th, the same hole that he nearly aced last year in a desperate scramble to recover from his quad at the 12th.

At the 12th on this day about an hour earlier, Spieth got the kind of reception one might get if he were leading late on Sunday or had just won a hole to go up in a crucial Ryder Cup match. Amen Corner is always jammed but the biggest crowds had been cascading through the hills of Augusta following Spieth’s group all day and everyone scrambled to find a spot for his first Masters tournament tee shot since it all came undone there a year ago. His parents, family, girlfriend, even fellow Longhorn Ben Crenshaw, were all down there with the thousands of patrons as he came through again. He got a huge ovation and smiled as he made that famous short walk up from the 11th green.

The wind was gusting thoughout the course on Thursday, but it gets especially unpredictable down in that corner of the property. Spieth’s return to that tee box was prolonged, too, when Jeunghun Wang in the group ahead blasted one into the hill behind the green and had to come back and re-tee after being unable to find his ball. Spieth couldn’t just tee it up, hit, and get the hell out of there. The golf gods made him wait.

He waited as the wind whipped and shifted. It was mostly right to left and into the tee, which is preferable to the alternative, given that right miss he’s said he has a problem with and which caused the havoc there last year. When the ball landed safely, the crowd’s reaction was completely incongruous with the result. It was a fine shot, but just the fact that it was dry led to jubilation. “I was a bit surprised at how loud the cheer was when my ball landed 35 feet from the hole,” he said. After a lag putt, he tapped in for a par to finish what, oddly enough, ended up being one of his most routine holes of the day.

His ball striking was not particularly sharp in tough conditions and his frustration showed throughout the front nine, repeatedly turning to his caddie Michael Greller or lecturing himself as he walked solo down the middle of a fairway. He backed off putts repeatedly, hit some loose irons, imprecise wedges, and often just looked uncomfortable standing over the ball. Spieth often emotes in a way that if you weren’t looking at the scorecard, you’d think he was having the worst round of his life. And that was before he put a 9 on his card.

And yet ... yet! ... he’s still right there, just 3-over after a day that brutalized the field, non-Charley Hoffman edition. How many players can post a 9 on this course and still shoot a 75 and keep their green jacket hopes alive? The 9 also didn’t come in the middle of some blistering round full of birdies. It was uneven throughout, finishing with an all-world par save from the trees on the 18th. You don’t know whether to be alarmed that he’s made a quadruple bogey again or impressed that he mitigated that astronomical number with a relatively fine score of 75 (still his highest here, but the conditions played a part).

Spieth has only played 13 Masters rounds but he’s piled up a careers’ worth of moments, triumphs, and scars in that short time. We got more of it on Thursday, in the form of an exhale at the scene where he last became the story of the tournament and in the form of another baffling implosion that became the talk of the property on this day. Given his incredible track record in just three starts, we’ll likely get more over the next three days, and I can’t wait to see what’s next.