AT&T National: Jordan Spieth Continues to Flash in Rookie Season

Quick, remember what you were doing in the summertime at the age of 19.

Was it working a nice, little full-time job at a local grocery store, restaurant or whatever place would give you a measly salary enough to get you by in school the next year?

Or did it involve an internship (possibly unpaid), where you slaved long hours desperate to find experience useful to your resume in post-graduate life?

Maybe you took a risk, dropped out of school and searched for your next venture totally oblivious as to where that would come.

Whatever it is, Jordan Spieth has got you beat.

On Friday, the Texas lad charged his way into a tie for the lead at the AT&T National, posting a second-round 66 to catch Roberto Castro and surge ahead of the rest of the field.

And what an easy 66 it was.

Spieth hit a pair of mediocre approach shots in his first four holes, but still managed a birdie and three pars over that opening stretch.

Then he caught fire.

The 19-year-old displayed his youthful aggressiveness over the remainder of the front-nine, lasering an approach to five feet for birdie on No. 5, getting up-and-down for another on No. 6, stuffing a wedge three feet from the flag for yet another red score on No. 8, and rounding out the opening half by firing a 200-yard approach 11 feet from the flag and holing the putt for his fourth birdie in five holes.

The scintillating start to the round vaulted Spieth into the solo lead, and while his ball-striking continued to flourish on the back nine, the putter failed to cooperate. That meant nine two-putt pars to finish, allowing first-round leader Roberto Castro to catch him at 7 under par.

Still, the Dallas native made the normally tough Congressional layout appear no more fearsome than a local muni, finding all 18 greens in regulation and affording himself birdie attempts inside 15 feet on half of those holes.

While Spieth dropped less than half of those putts, he ended the day with five birdies, zero bogeys and a scorecard that had to make him smile.

For the 19-year-old, his play this week has to be another welcome sight in what has been a sensationally lucrative year. Spieth first came onto the national scene at the age of 16, when he contended well into Sunday at the Byron Nelson before finishing in a tie for 16th. He also became a two-time U.S. Junior Amateur champion and parlayed his junior success into a spot on the legendary University of Texas men's golf squad, a one-and-a-half-year stint that netted him a team NCAA Championship along with a Big 12 Conference Player of the Year award and a first-team All-America selection.

But when Spieth turned pro last winter, he entered a most unforgiving atmosphere. The accomplished young amateur wiped the slate clean completely by turning pro in December, marking himself up to the big leagues even after failing to qualify for Q-School finals and leaving himself without a way to gain any status on the PGA Tour or Web.com Tour heading into 2013.

That meant opportunities to play—let alone earn on-course income—would be scarce, putting the young phenom in a precarious position for what should've been a highly anticipated rookie season.

Yet, it takes a special kind of player to place his name on the first page of the leaderboard during the final round of a PGA Tour event while still in high school, and Spieth responded as such a gutsy guy would.

Spieth missed the cut in his first start, but made a little bit of noise with a T22 showing at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am.

Then, Spieth dug in further.

In March, the enterprising Longhorn produced four rounds in the 60s in a PGA Tour event in Puerto Rico—a performance that included a hole-in-one during the final round—to finish joint runner-up one shot back of the champion, earn more than $300,000 and build his confidence to even greater levels. 

The train didn't stop there. The very next week, at the Tampa Bay Championship, Spieth found himself in contention again, seriously threatening to win on Sunday before a short miss on the ninth hole sent him into a funk the rest of the way and relegated him to a T7 finish. 

While disappointing, the poor conclusion did not leave too much of a sting. Actually, it was quite the contrary.  Under PGA Tour rules, players can become a special temporary member—a distinction that affords non-Tour members like Spieth unlimited sponsor exemptions, as opposed to the maximum of seven that are permitted without this safety net—once they earn as much as the 150th place finisher on the previous year's money list ($474,295 this past season).

With the nearly $150,000 he received for his latest top-10, Spieth reached $521,893 in earnings for the season, more than enough to give him the exemption he needed to obtain a slew of new chances to compete in PGA Tour events.

From absolutely nothing to a solid footing on Tour in three months, Spieth demonstrated there was good reason not to doubt his superior talents. The added opportunities only furthered that sentiment, as Spieth used his extra reps to put together two more top-10 finishes.

It's not even July and the 19-year-old has almost amassed $1 million in on-course earnings in 2013. And even though his $919,079 hasn't quite reached that seven figure mark as of yet, it will be plenty to secure Spieth his Tour card for the 2013-2014 season.

This weekend he will be searching for more. Spieth is two good rounds away from securing the AT&T National's grand prize north of $1 million and, more importantly, being assured a Tour card through the 2014-2015 season via the two-year exemption any winner on the circuit accumulates.

Whatever happens, Spieth has proven himself a quick study. Some may question that the risk Spieth took by turning pro this December was indeed so great. After all, his name was always enough to get him the maximum seven sponsors exemptions non-PGA Tour members can be doled out, along with numerous other such chances on the Web.com circuit.

But that still added up to a very limited schedule in which most purses were mediocre compared to those of the elite PGA Tour events. Spieth has somehow overcome the pressures of such a situation, one that could potentially press a player as the small number of tournaments dwindled, playing good golf all along.

To recap: One top-10 finish qualified him for a start in another event, he used that opening to produce another result of the sort—garnering some sort of status on the PGA Tour in the process—and rolled along with two more top-10s as the number of events he was eligible to compete in continued to swell.

It's all coming together for the rookie, in what, at first, looked to be set-up as a tumultuous opening year. Suddenly, 36 holes of golf like he produced Friday stand between Spieth and some major financial and card security.

Considering where his situation lay just six months ago, that's not a bad proposition.