It’s just a tiny movement of his head, a peek up, not even discernible to the people who line the ropes of every hole Jordan Spieth plays these days. It is a golf trick as metaphor. When Spieth prepares for a short putt — the kind we all miss but pros have to make — he doesn’t look at the ball. He looks at the hole. He looks ahead.
“He paid too much attention on his path, on his backstroke,” said Tiger Woods, who enjoyed his breakthrough win at the 1997 Masters, when Spieth was 3. “That was a way to eliminate it. It’s not that he has the yips. It’s just that his eyes will look at the path.”
Spieth’s path this week puts him at Congressional Country Club, where he will be both Woods’s guest and competition at the Quicken Loans National. For most 20-year-olds, this would be an opportunity to test skills against the best the PGA Tour has to offer. Except at 20, Spieth is already among the best the PGA Tour has to offer.
“Watching him,” five-time major winner Phil Mickelson said, “is a lot of fun.”