PEBBLE BEACH, CALIFORNIA | With all the talk swirling around the PGA Tour and what it needs to do to rediscover its supposedly missing mojo, one of the most obvious solutions spent Thursday at Spyglass Hill starting fresh.
Jordan Spieth’s 2-under-par 70 under gray skies dulled in comparison to the 66 his friend and playing companion Justin Thomas shot in the first round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am but it had its own glow fueled by the smile on Spieth’s face afterward.
Spieth is five months removed from surgery on his left wrist and Thursday was his first tournament round since he finished the FedEx St. Jude Championship in mid-August, knowing surgery awaited.
Other than Tiger Woods, who rarely plays now, and Rory McIlroy, it’s fair to say no PGA Tour player moves the imagination needle more than Spieth. Amid the discussion about what may be missing from the tour, Spieth’s name on weekend leaderboards is one thing.
Spieth hasn’t won since the 2022 RBC Heritage and he has just two wins since his 2017 Open Championship victory. The void in Spieth’s trophy case has left a void within the tour.
The first official step in Spieth’s next act came in Thursday’s chilly conditions.
“Starting out it felt like I was starting a major,” Spieth said.
Spieth had surgery in late August and it was two months before he could grip a club. He wore a cast that reached from the middle of his left bicep to his fingers while he healed.
After eight weeks, he was cleared to do some putting and light chipping. In early November, he began hitting Nerf balls and after 12 weeks, he began hitting golf balls again, gradually working up from short pitch shots to longer shots.
“There was a stretch there … where I could start to hit on a ball count and I would hit one, say a 6-iron thin off the heel and it hurt real bad, but it would sting and then it would kind of go away. I would hit a couple more and it would be all right if I didn’t hit them thin off the heel.” – Jordan Spieth
Having talked to other athletes including fellow pro Sahith Theegala and former baseball star Mark Teixeira about how they handled their post-surgery recoveries, Spieth didn’t rush the process, falling back on the adage that no one has ever come back too late from surgery.
“There was a stretch there … where I could start to hit on a ball count and I would hit one, say a 6-iron thin off the heel and it hurt real bad, but it would sting and then it would kind of go away. I would hit a couple more and it would be all right if I didn’t hit them thin off the heel,” Spieth said.
Shortly before Christmas, Spieth played three rounds learning to trust his recovery. Every day it got better.
Spieth had dealt sporadically with wrist issues through the years but when he felt something pop in his left wrist as he was getting out of the pool with his son Sammy in 2023, his concern grew.
A tendon that runs along the outside of the wrist would pop out of place from time to time. The good news is it didn’t happen during his swing and Spieth was able to move the tendon back into place each time.
But what was originally a once in a while thing became a recurring and painful nuisance.
In the process, he struggled to be the player he had been.
“Whether it was affecting (my swing) or not, I’ll never know but it doesn’t really matter now,” Spieth said.
An unintended consequence from the surgery is Spieth could work through a needed refresh of his swing. He adjusted the path of his takeaway, intent on returning his motion closer to what it was in his prime, improving consistency with his wedges which had fallen off in recent seasons.
“I was able to work on some things in the swing kind of in a way that I hadn’t worked on them since I was 13 years old, where I had this time, this wet concrete to try to mold some things, get out of some bad habits,” Spieth said.
After shooting 3-under par on his first nine holes at Spyglass and feeling the buzz again, Spieth was reminded his recovery is a work in progress. Hitting high, spinny bunker shots is still a challenge and Thursday provided a reminder.
“The sand was firm and it got (the wrist) pretty good and it kind of locked up. I couldn’t hit an iron shot from there so I just played really poorly. I just had to get it in,” Spieth said.
“It’ll be fine. It’s happened sometimes like that. It’s one of the growing pains (but) I was really rolling.”
“It’s only felt like I’ve missed a couple of events and being around here it doesn’t feel crazy. It feels like I just waited to start the season.” – Jordan Spieth
It will take time for him to get fully comfortable hitting shots from hanging lies or to tucked pins. He’s working to regain his feel for off-speed shots and he leans toward picking conservative targets while making aggressive swings.
When he made the turn at 3-under par, Spieth felt like he’d never been away, like he hadn’t spent four weeks in Colorado after having surgery there, beginning the long, arduous process that, in a sense, culminated Thursday.
“It’s only felt like I’ve missed a couple of events and being around here it doesn’t feel crazy. It feels like I just waited to start the season,” Spieth said.
“(But) if I really think back to the day I had the surgery, it’s like, wow, this was a crazy process to get here. I feel so grateful for the all the help I received to be back at this point that I almost forgot about the process.”
It seemed familiar again, Spieth and Thomas and their 28 combined tour victories (including five majors) walking and talking with their amateur partners with the Pacific Ocean in the distance.
What’s missing from the PGA Tour?
Those two holding trophies is part of it and, in the freshness of a new season, that didn’t seem so far away Thursday afternoon.