Jordan Spieth won Valspar last year in dramatic fashion by nailing a 28 ft birdie putt on the 3rd playoff hole to beat Patrick Reed and Sean O’Hair in a playoff. This tournament started his run of 5 PGA tour wins, including 2 majors, to be the #1 ranked golfer in 2015. He opened the 2016 year at the Hyundai Tournment of Champions in 2016 and won by 8 strokes. Safe to say everyone thought that this year would be another year of Spieth domination. Not so.
A 76 was not how he wanted open up the first round today at Valspar. Being surrounded by guys like Brian Gay and Michael Kim is not a good look. I wouldn’t worry too much though because Jordan Spieth has a way of defying odds. At John Deere last year after an opening round even par (the leader of the first round was -8), he fired a 64 (-7) and then went real low with a 61 (-10) to get back in contention. +5 on a course where the leaders are -4 is no biggie.
Power in the hairline
I tend to dislike winners because there’s always someone else to root for that isn’t the favorite. However, I watched Spieth on Feherty and he’s a likable human being. I enjoyed hearing how his mind works when competing on the highest level. He was describing an instance where it looked like a putt was going to break a certain way but he knew from previous rounds that it wasn’t what appeared. On the 17th hole of the Masters last year, he TRUSTED that his read was right and dropped a sick putt. I’d recommend watching him on Feherty because he’s a mature kid for only being 22 and his wisdom is worth listening to.
I know not many people care about golf posts but I’ll let you live vicariously through my Draftking team this week.
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