Jordan Spieth feels confident his game is improving after returning from wrist surgery and other injuries.
He aims for a strong finish in the FedEx Cup Playoffs to secure a spot in next year’s signature events and potentially the Ryder Cup.
Spieth believes he can regain top form with a productive offseason.
If confidence is knowing your best golf is still to come, Jordan Spieth is talking a good game. He’s bullish that his game is ready to click and that his wrist injury, which required off-season surgery, isn’t holding him back anymore.
“My wrist has not been an issue and I’ve structurally been doing things the right way. I feel like I’ve been putting good rolls on the ball and just waiting to kind of pop off on a good putting week,” Spieth said on Wednesday ahead of the Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, N.C. “So I don’t feel like I have to do anything different, I just need to keep my head down and if it works out, it works out. If it doesn’t, it’s coming soon. “
Spieth always knew that this season was going to be a tricky one that would require patience, given that he missed the first month of the season after undergoing wrist surgery last fall. It didn’t help that he had to withdraw for the first time in his career at the Travelers Championship with a neck and back injury and then sat out for a couple of weeks in preparation for the birth of his third child, son Sully.
Jordan Spieth showed up rusty at British
He admitted he showed up to the British Open earlier this month with a rusty game. He’s recorded just two top-five finishes and seven top-20s in 17 starts this season. But his swing is trending in the right direction. He ranks No. 16 in Strokes Gained: Total, an indication that his game may be on the verge of returning the 32-year-old Spieth to the form that made him a three-time major winner and 14-time winner on Tour.
He enters this week’s Wyndham Championship held at Sedgefield Country Club at No. 50 in the FedEx Cup standings, which means he’s safe for the first leg of the playoffs in Memphis but is on the bubble for the BMW Championship, where the top 50 advance for the second leg of the playoffs. That’s an important benchmark for Spieth as making the top 50 guarantees entry into all eight signature events next season. Spieth was on the outside looking in this year.
“I didn’t like asking for exemptions this year at all. I was fortunate to receive a lot of them, but you just never know,” he said. “And when you miss out on elevated events, the way it’s structured, they’ve got the best players in the world at all of them and you don’t want to miss any of them.”
Can Jordan Spieth still make the Ryder Cup team?
Spieth would like this to be the start of a four-week run of good play all the way to East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, site of the final leg of the playoffs, and still contends that if he can do so he can merit a selection by U.S. Ryder Cup captain Keegan Bradley for his 12-man squad trying to regain the Cup from Team Europe in late September at Bethpage Black.
“I’ve got to win. I’ve got to work my way in,” he said after the British Open. “I think if I can make it to the Tour Championship, that means that I’ve played well in the playoffs, in big events, and it may come down to if Keegan picks himself or not and opens up a spot. It may come down to how other guys are playing that are on the bubble.”
Spieth, who has played on the last five U.S. Ryder Cup teams dating to 2014, compared his chances of making the team to Justin Thomas earning a captain’s pick based more on his track record and veteran experience in 2023 than his current form.
“He was outside the Playoffs altogether, where I think maybe if you go off recency bias, I would have been playing better this last half of this year, coming into the end of this year. So that gives me hope, but also remember who was on the receiving end of when Justin got picked. So that doesn’t necessarily mean – they’re going off the stats guys and they’re going to pick the best 12 guys. Do I think I’m that right this second? No. But do I think I can be that by three weeks’ time? Yeah.”
Regardless, Spieth is confident that he’s on the verge of ending his winless drought, which dates to the 2022 RBC Heritage.
“Next year’s going to be a really good year for me, I can feel it. It’s all coming along. I’ll be healthy, and just structurally putting, the mechanics are all getting really, really close,” he said. “One good offseason should get me nailed down to where I could be as good as I’ve been. That’s my goal.”
