Jordan Spieth Showing He's the Anti-Tiger Golf Needs in Hot Start at the Masters
When Jordan Spieth's name went to the top of the leaderboard early Thursday at the Masters, it performed the same magic trick that Tiger Woods' name used to do: It made all the other names sort of blur together and become indecipherable.
Spieth is back, having shot a six-under 66 for the early lead. After dominating golf last year, he had struggled some early this year. You probably didn't notice, as the sport is measured only by the majors four times per year. But golf insiders wondered a little.
So what did Spieth do when he started to roll again at Augusta National in the biggest moment of the year?
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He leaned back, pumped his fist, screamed at the top of his lungs in his bright red shirt and...no, wait. He didn't do that. He never does.
"To be in this position's really cool," he said during a post-round interview on ESPN. And then he blinked.
And blinked again.
Spieth is a different type of champion, the type who grabs attention while trying not to grab any. He is not warmed by the spotlight as much as by a cool, ruthless putt with all the pressure on. People wonder if he can be the next Tiger.
He can't. He is the anti-Tiger. He's exactly what golf needs right now, and he's what golf is getting. Thursday's round was not the final proof that he'll be around for years, but it was an awful lot of evidence. And this isn't meant as a knock on Woods. In fact, the funny thing is that when Woods arrived with the flash, red shirt, big smile, swear words and massive swing, that was exactly what golf needed to break the monotony.
But the way the Woods story blew up, maybe golf just needed a little level-headedness again.
It's all about timing. Woods was what the sport needed at that time, and an anti-Woods is the best it can hope for now.
Woods is 40 and missing the Masters while recovering from multiple back surgeries. He is never going to be the same. But golf is in the strange position of hoping it can get a little bit more Tiger while counting on the anti-Tiger.
Spieth is quiet, serious and, so far anyway, without much personality. We tend to cheer for sports in highlights, looking for the craziest dunk, the longest home run, the biggest hit. Spieth is finding a way to get people to cheer for the actual game itself.
Not that there won't be a drop-off in popularity from Woods. There will be. But there aren't a lot of Tiger Woods types hanging around to step in and replace him. And rather than replace him, Spieth is carving his own name. And he and Rory McIlroy and Jason Day can give golf an international rivalry for a decade.
McIlroy and Day will be right there with Spieth for years, and probably over the weekend too. But the U.S tour needs a U.S. player.
Golf has a way of hanging onto its history more than any other game, expect for, maybe, baseball. But golf also has a way of putting all the generations together in the same tapestry at one time. So Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player were out there hitting the ceremonial opening drive, while Arnold Palmer watched.
And then when the tournament started, who was one of the first names to hit the top of the leaderboard? Tom Watson, who's 66.
He had made a long birdie putt on No. 3. And you knew he wouldn't be among the leaders by the end of the day, but he was for a few minutes anyway. And while the past was still there, the Golf Channel did a great feature on possibly the future: Bryson DeChambeau, who won the NCAA Championship and the U.S. Amateur and has caused a stir with his unusual approach to the game.
Through a golf book that his coach gave him when he was younger, Golf Channel said, DeChambeau became obsessed with the physics of golf. He went to SMU to study physics and applied that to a few oddities he developed in his golf swing.
"I'm training my brain and my body, my hands how to move and when to move through time and space," he said.
When you see golf's historical timeline playing out right there on your TV on a Thursday in April, you get the sense that the game is not at the end of its Woods phase but instead at the ground floor of the next stage.
Here's a prediction: DeChambeau will not be able to beat golf with physics. The all-time greats must get a laugh out of that. People have tried to figure out the geometrical secrets of golf forever. The game is too stubborn and not that left-brained, no matter what swing coaches say.
Talking about his chipping, DeChambeau said, roughly, "I extrapolate data based on integers."
Talking about his six-under round Thursday in contrast to his early-season troubles, Spieth, the defending Masters champ who is just 22, told ESPN: "I love that the golf course requires imagination. It requires a lot of feel. It makes me go away from a lot of the technical parts of the game that a lot of times take over when we're trying to grind on the range and get everything set."
That just sounds like a champion, someone who frees his mind under the most pressure. He sounded like a champion, too, when he told ESPN how special it felt to see Nicklaus, Palmer and Woods at the champions dinner before the tournament.
He said winning the Masters last year, and the green jacket, changed his life and added serious challenges to his time management. On the course, he said, the green jacket gives you the knowledge that if you're in contention, you know you can do it because you have done it before.
He's going to do it again too. And he'll do it in his own anti-Tiger way, creating excitement without the red shirt and making his mark on golf history.
Greg Couch covers golf for Bleacher Report. All quotes were obtained firsthand unless otherwise indicated.
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