Jordan Spieth Says Putting Played Role in Missing 2017 Players Championship Cut

Jordan Spieth missed the cut Friday in the 2017 Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, after posting a four-over after the first two rounds, leaving the American two shots below the cut line.

Spieth shot a three-over 75 on Friday, which was punctuated by a double-bogey on No. 17 after hitting his tee shot in the water on the famed island hole.

However, Spieth pointed to his lackluster putting as the main reason why he wasn't able to qualify for the final two rounds. 

"It's just been on and around these greens. I just haven't quite figured it out," Spieth said, according to GolfChannel.com's Will Gray. "These greens get pretty crusty and, historically, whenever firm Bermuda greens are crusty to where it's tough to set the putter down, I just struggle with my alignment and it just throws me off. It happened again here."

With Saturday's missed cut, it marks the third consecutive year Spieth has failed to reach the weekend at the Players Championship.

The result represents the 19th time, and the second instance so far in 2017, Spieth failed to survive the cut in a PGA Tour event. He's missed the weekend at least twice in every season since becoming a full-time player during the 2013 campaign.

While those numbers are high compared to the standard set by Tiger Woods, who regularly went an entire year without missing a cut during his peak seasons, the 23-year-old Dallas native is one of the tour's most consistent players.

The two biggest factors for that are his smooth, repeatable swing and his strong all-around skill set. He's gone through some stretches in recent years where one aspect of his game is off—it was his driving early in 2017—but the other aspects of his game usually make up for it.

Last May, he told Jim McCabe of Golfweek after missing the cut at the 2016 Players Championship he was also working on his mental approach after "beating myself up" too much during poor rounds.

"Just need to be a little bit more positive with myself on the course and maybe kind of lower my expectations a little bit and just kind of free myself up," Spieth said. "It just seems I'm so tense and I just need to get back to the way I enjoy playing golf and I'm not far off."

That concerted effort certainly paid dividends because he didn't miss a cut the rest of 2016 and carried the streak until the Shell Houston Open in late March.

It's hard to imagine the rare poor performance will have any type of lingering impact given his track record of bouncing back and getting into contention again. Only one other time since 2015 did he fail to record a top-20 finish in his next start after a missed cut.

"Game's in really good shape," Spieth said, per Gray. "Historically just haven't figured it out on these greens yet, and so I'm just not going to think too much about it. This is probably the best my game has felt after a missed cut, so I've got three exciting weeks coming up."

Spieth is scheduled to tee it up again at the AT&T Byron Nelson next week.