You probably haven’t seen Jordan Spieth throw a club before. His way of Getting It Out is more verbal. But on the 16th hole Saturday, he let one loose.
Checking in on Jordan. pic.twitter.com/pPrjqq0wnB
— Kyle Porter (@KylePorterNS) March 15, 2025
Spieth says he didn’t mean it, and you have to believe him — he likes to fake swing while walking forward; this time the club slipped — but it’s kind of how things have been going at this year’s Players. Between the test, its prominence, and its place on the calendar, the Players tells us who is in a state of zen with their game. (It might be a party of one, named JJ Spaun.) And ultimately, that’s what makes it great. The Masters is around the corner, and this is the mid-term report card. What grade do these pros feel they deserve right now?
Masters Week is 23 days away, and plenty can happen before then, but it wasn’t long ago Scottie Scheffler, the No. 1 player in the world, was sitting out, healing a hole in his hand. Scheffler hasn’t won yet — an incredibly high standard he’s set in recent years — and has shown signs of prickliness at any suggestion he won’t soon. But clubs are being thrown, and balls purposefully tossed into the nearest hazard.
Meanwhile, Xander Schauffele is on a ball count — or at least he was — coming back from his rib injury, and he’s rather unhappy with it. Schauffele has spent the last 24 months almost exclusively playing better-than-average golf, but since he returned at last week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational, it’s been two steps forward, two steps back. He followed Friday’s round — and 59th-straight made cut — by telling reporters he was going to “blow right through” the ball count on the driving range because his game was simply, “really bad.”
“There’s really not much more going through my head other than, ‘I’m hitting it like crap. I need to hit it better. I need to do everything better,’” Schauffele added Saturday, after a third-round 77. He says he feels behind the 8-ball compared to the rest of the Tour, his body not allowing him to return sooner than at Bay Hill and TPC Sawgrass, two of the toughest tests on Tour. “It’s a true test of where my game’s at,” he said, “and that’s obviously not very good.”
Understood! Schauffele reiterated those points by joining next week’s Valspar Championship field at the last minute. It’ll be his final stop before the Masters. He needs reps. And he isn’t alone. After missing the cut at Sawgrass, Viktor Hovland is playing next week’s Valspar for the first time in three years.
Also down in Tampa will be Spieth, our accidental club-thrower, who felt badly enough about it that he walked over and fixed the area where his club connected with the turf. He normally signs up for the Tampa event, but it feels extra necessary right now. He too is coming back from injury and began this season stressing long-term patience. But then he played well and has been battling the urge to press; forget about being patient.
If he’s anxious about anything, it’s the lingering feeling of denial. Spieth couldn’t play last week’s Signature Event because he didn’t get in the field — a result of finishing outside the Top 50 last year — and he didn’t receive a sponsor’s exemption. He wants some “house money” in the FedEx Cup ranking so he can play freer and chase after some great results. Hence his disappointment in that necked shot on 16 that ended up in the water. “If I do par that hole, four under is probably top 20 by the end of the day,” Spieth said, “and instead I’m finishing at two under. I’ve had a couple swings that were a couple shots this week, and the guys who are at the top don’t make those.”
In years past, we’ve seen a number of Tour stars elevate ahead of the Masters, and it often shows when they arrive at the Players. But even two of this season’s top performers have had serious flashpoints of uneasiness this week. See: Collin Morikawa’s rebuttal to TV criticism and Rory McIlroy’s practice-round tossing of a spectator who had ridiculed him loudly on the 18th tee. (His response to questions was similarly frosty.) Just last week, McIlroy paid an Uber driver nearly £760 to drive some older clubs he was more confident in from Jupiter to Orlando. You can only imagine how this week would be going if he hadn’t.
Despite all that, McIlroy has worked himself into contention and stayed afloat Saturday when Sawgrass and Mother Nature combined to become the ultimate stress. This course does this at least once annually — second round in 2023, the second round in 2022, and the first round here in 2021 — where the scoring average is multiple shots above par. The work of Pete Dye puts players on edge, has them tweeting about unfair hole locations, and flailing around when the wind pushes their balls into bunkers. See: Will Zalatoris on the 14th hole.
🚨Will Zalatoris’ quad bogey on the redesigned 14th hole at TPC Sawgrass on March 15, 2025, dropped him from T2 to T9 in a flash. Ouch! ⛳️ #Golf #PlayersChampionship #Zalatorispic.twitter.com/46VOpWFfoq
— Social Pulse Report (@Social_Pulse1) March 16, 2025
It’s both this place and this time of year. If Saturday’s round was ever turned into a documentary, Zalatoris’ “What kind of a kick was that” reaction — en route to a quadruple bogey — would be in the opening credits. He was one of a handful of pros who teased themselves with the thought of winning the biggest tournament of the season to date, only to realise their game isn’t that tidy just yet. The scariest thought looms: they might be running out of time.
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