There’s no doubt that Jordan Spieth plays golf as if he has nine lives on the golf course and he danced with the devil again as he somehow managed to make the cut at the PLAYERS Championship despite his second round spiralling out of control.
Spieth looked like he was going to be challenging the leaders after a birdie, birdie start to his day but a bogey on 13 and a double on 14 following a penalty drop cut the legs from under him and he never recovered.
A bizzarre bogey on the par-5 2nd was followed by a double on the fifth and a bogey on the eighth sent him a shot below the cut line on two-over. His hopes looked dead in the water after he carved a driver way right on nine asking his caddie Michael Greller: ‘is that out of play?’ before it remarkably rebounded into the fairway leading to the most Jordan Spieth eagle you will ever see.
Replays show the ball cannoned off a spectator’s knee and the three-time major winner feels indebted to him for the weekend after making the cut on level-par with what was a three-over 75, in the end.
“Only looking forward now, I got an extremely lucky break on 9 or I wouldn’t be playing the weekend. Trying to get that guy’s information and see literally whatever he wants this weekend because everything from here on out is because it hit him.
“Yeah, very fortunate. Can’t say I deserved it, but I tried to hold my attitude together and just keep on focusing trying one foot in front of the other. I don’t know if that means I got rewarded for that or what, but overall I got very, very fortunate on 9.”
Spieth is arguably a better watch on the television than he is live given that after most shots he holds an in person press conference with himself when he’s not chewing the ear off of Greller. The American teeters on the edge of the magnificent and the 18-handicapper, but he is box office and the ninth hole is just another addition to the highlight reel.
“Yeah, my left foot grabbed as I was transitioning, like pain, and I backed off and I thinned one, and I thinned it into the wind and it was right, which there’s water left and right. It was going in one of the waters, and I get it hit the cart path and short-hopped off the guy’s knee and then went out in the fairway forward, as well, and it must have been — the way for it to go off of him, it also then went off his knee, up in the air, over some of the water. I mean, it’s the equivalent of flying a green towards a hazard and hitting a grandstand and coming back on the green in a way.
“Needing to probably birdie to make the cut, I can’t really birdie having to drop it over in the right rough over there after hitting my third. It would have been a one in a million make, instead I ended up making a 3. A lot of times I kind of feel bad about that and don’t focus on the next shot, but I hit a 3-wood exactly where I wanted to and hit a chip exactly where I wanted to, so I’m very happy about rebounding from that. But yeah, I didn’t see it, but when I struck it, I was like, that’s out of play. Then all of a sudden they were like Joe, Max’s caddie, said it got a huge kick it’s in the fairway. I don’t know what it can hit off of over there except for a person.”
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