Jordan Spieth is rich, suddenly famous and the envy of every golfer in the world at the moment, but he is also 21 years old. So you can imagine how hard it must have been for him to stand on the practice putting green at Augusta National on Sunday evening and do something that would terrify most people: give an impromptu speech.
He’d already won the Masters and stopped by Butler Cabin for an interview on national TV. He had listened to directions on where to go and what to do -- and admitted to last year’s champion, Bubba Watson, that he wasn’t processing a word anybody said. They were on Earth, but he was not. Then he went to speak on the green, with a big crowd around him, and what did he do?
He thanked Augusta National members, the volunteers (“it’s really underrated what you guys do,”), the staff, his family and the “patrons”. He thanked his caddie, Michael Greller, a former math teacher whom Spieth kept when most people in golf would have advised him to hire a more experienced man. Every word was just about perfect. You could almost feel the pride coming from his parents.
Even later, when Spieth (accurately) said that Justin Rose barely missed a few putts that could have made the finish more interesting, he said, “If he had made –” and then he stopped. He reached into his bagful of polite and came up with this: “If a couple of those had dropped …” The subtle rephrasing made it sound as if Rose was the victim of tough luck than even the mildest criticism.
All week, Spieth seemed immune to pressure. That would be cool if it were true, but it’s not. Being immune would make it easy. As he said on that practice green, with his hat off and his expanding forehead in full view: “There is a reason I have a hairline like this. It’s stressful, what we do on a daily basis.”
There is a reason you don’t see many golfers go wire to wire in a major: Sleeping on a lead is not restful. Spieth said he slept well on Thursday, O.K. on Friday, and not so well after a Saturday night viewing of Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Evidently he had a hard time forgetting Rose and Phil Mickelson, who were lurking on the leader board, and maybe his mind wandered to Bobby Jones, too.
No, Spieth is not immune to the pressure. He just manages it exceptionally well. As he stood over a short par putt on the 14th green, he heard a mighty roar, and Sunday roars at Augusta National form a language you learn when you get here. This roar could only mean one thing: Mickelson had eagled No. 15 to pull within four shots.
Spieth backed away from the putt, composed himself and then drained it.
He said he did not allow himself to think he had won the Masters until he walked up the 18th fairway -- at which point Greller reminded him it wasn’t over. Spieth matched Tiger Woods’s Masters 72-hole record at 18 under, and both did it at age 21, but not all 18-unders are created equal. Woods won by 12 shots, which means a) Tiger’s performance was more dominant, but b) he didn’t have nearly the same pressure on him on Sunday.
At his peak, Tiger seemed superhuman. Spieth just seems superbly human.
His personality is a delightful cocktail of modesty and self-assuredness. All week, he shared his mental mistakes with the media, unprompted. But he stuck with Greller because he knew Greller was right for him, and he mastered Augusta without being a particularly long hitter, because he is that rare human who smiles when he faces a double-breaking 25-footer.