It's not your imagination; Jordan Spieth is playing insanely slow at the Masters
Forget rankings, Jordan Spieth is the world's best golfer. He's great from tee-to-green. He's sublime with a putter in his hands. And, Sunday, the 22-year-old Texan is hoping to become the first back-to-back wire-to-wire winner at the Masters. But there's another, less thrilling part about Jordan Spieth's game: Dude's slow.
There are glaciers that move with more pace. People who were stuck behind student drivers earlier in the day think Spieth is too deliberate. He's like Joey from Friends and his game is like ketchup in a glass Heinz bottle teetering on the fifth floor of a building.
At first, it's the sort of thing you might not notice, like when someone's a loud chewer. But, much like with that chewer, the instant you find out you can't notice anything else. Spieth has always been a deliberate player (he received a penalty earlier this year in Abu Dhabi) but he's taken it to a new level at Augusta, as if the increased difficulty (both in the course and the conditions) and pressure have paralyzed his decision making. And paralyze it it has.
Spieth never has a shot that can't be discussed three more times with his caddie. He goes back-and-forth off shots like a nervous bungee jumper. Every chip is an exercise in topography, as he walks the 80-or-so yards from his ball to the pin to evaluate every undulation. When he stands over a putt, he's as indecisive as me at Popeye's when I'm deciding between a three-piece and a five-piece.
(NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)
This one's serious: I was at a wedding Saturday (yes, I've still decided to remain friends with the couple who had their wedding on moving day at The Masters) so I DVR'd the third round and watched when I got home. Occasionally, I would use the lowest fast-foward setting, the one where you can still tell what's happening, just at a much quicker pace. And even then, with the speed of events going twice as fast as they did in real life, Spieth's pace was maddening. He's so mentally strong and sure of himself (which is what made his meltdown on Nos. 17 and 18 on Saturday so bizarre), but in the middle of a round that certainty comes from his plodding, methodical process.
Here's an example of his, uh, let's call it meticulous, nature from the end of his round on Saturday. On the 16th green, Spieth looked at a six-footer with a slight left-to-right break for 99 seconds. On the 17th tee, he thought about his tee shot for 40 seconds. His next shot, from the pine needles, took about two minutes to hit. After he somehow punched out cleanly, Spieth took another 90 seconds for his chip into the green, a routine which included seven waggles. His putt was downright speedy, taking just 68 seconds (though he was also lining up the putt as playing partner Rory McIlroy was reading his). An approach on 18 took 2:10 (though it was also on the straw). His chip up to the green took the same amount of time. And it took him 1:55 to line up his par putt on 18, which he missed, leading to a bogey putt took at least a minute. Spieth was +3 on those two holes.
(David Cannon/Getty Images)
The rest of the holes, even when he wasn't figuring out how to maneuver through trees and pine needles (which obviously affected his time on those two shots), were more of the same. He was generally taking well over a minute to hit the ball from the fairway. As a comparison: Rory's approach on 18 took 30 seconds from the time he pulled a club to the time he hit the ball. When Spieth was playing with the odd (in golf terms) Bryson DeChambeau on Thursday and Friday, it was like watching polar opposites. The amateur would get up to the ball, no waggle and hit. Meanwhile, Spieth was about 5 percent of the way through his routine.
His grouping was put on the clock on both Thursday and Friday (ridiculous considering how fast DeChambeau plays), a fact which frustrated Spieth, who said:
OK, first, let's not make it seem like they made you play the rest of your round blindfolded with a 7-iron, nor that you were the only one to play in those conditions. Everyone was dealing with the swirling gusts, they just weren't standing over their shots for 90 seconds waiting for the wind to slow down. There are rules. The rules exist for a reason. Break them and you get put on the clock. It's simple.
(David Cannon/Getty Images)
Of course, we've yet to get to the elephant in the room (who moves faster than Spieth plays, we should note): Spieth has been leading The Masters for seven straight rounds. He's on the verge of winning back-to-back titles. His deliberate play is used for good. When he's stepping off an approach five times, walking off putts like he's Lewis and/or Clark and going back-and-forth with his caddie, it generally leads to great shots, the kind that get the Augusta galleries in those rare full-throated roars usually only heard when there's a Jack or Tiger on the leaderboard.
Those roars aren't too few, but they are definitely too far in between. And if Spieth develops a reputation of a slow golfer, game over. Golf is not a sport that can handle its best player being interminably slow, not in a culture where you could literally check Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat, then flip open your Kindle and read a chapter in between Spieth's shots and not miss a beat. The people who decry the game as being too boring will be right. The game needs to get faster, not slower. And then there's the nightmare scenario: Duffers always like to emulate the best in the sport (when Tiger was in his heyday, there was a lot of red on the course) so there's a serious chance this leads to 25-handicaps stalking each putt like Spieth with a Masters on the line and no one needs the five-hour rounds that brings. So, Jordan, for as good as you are, pick up the pace, bro. Please.
(Jeff Siner/Charlotte Observer/TNS via Getty Images)