At just 22 years old, Jordan Spieth is the No. 1 golfer, the sport’s highest earning player and an international celebrity.
Back home in Dallas, the real star of the Spieth family is his 15-year-old sister.
“We say all the time – our friends and his friends – we all live in Ellie’s world,” said Chris Spieth, their mother. “No matter what’s going on, it’s all about her. At least she thinks that.”
If there is source of Jordan Spieth’s humility and maturity, it’s his little sister. Ellie was born prematurely with a still undiagnosed neurological disorder that left her developmentally challenged. As a New York Times feature eloquently put it, Ellie’s life is “a happy dance interrupted by cloudbursts.”
Jordan simply calls her “the best thing that ever happened to our family.”
“She’s the most special part of our family,” he said. “She’s the funniest part of our family.”
When Spieth is commended for the grounding impact of his relationship with his sister, he responds much like Bobby Jones when he was lauded for calling a penalty on himself at the 1925 U.S. Open.
“You might as well praise a man for not robbing a bank,” Jones famously said.
Spieth can’t comprehend what his life would be like without Ellie in it and how it would have impacted his personality.
“I don’t know what the alternative would be,” he said. “Would I be a brat? Are other people not normal people?"
“With Ellie and how we grew up with her and her struggles and her triumphs, I think it just put life a little more in perspective than maybe it would have had we not experienced it. My parents are such great parents I don’t think it would have changed much, but we were able to see first hand what someone who struggles like that is like and it certainly took over our family. So maybe that’s what helps keep me ‘normal.’ I don’t know what the alternative is when everyone says maturity and grounded.”
With Ellie and how we grew up with her and her struggles and her triumphs, I think it just put life a little more in perspective than maybe it would have had we not experienced it.
Anyone who has a special needs child in their family or knows someone who does can relate. For all the challenges they might present, there is purity of spirt and heart that is magnetic and infectious. They inevitably shape the lives of everyone they touch.
“It teaches a lot of life lessons,” said Rosalind Funderburgh, the founder of the school for special needs kids where Ellie has attended since she was 7. “I think if you have a special needs child in your family, everybody has to take on a slightly different role. In the Spieth family you’ve got Steven and Jordan being typical children doing typical guy things. And then you have a child that takes lots of time and lots of emotional resources and everybody has to give to that. Jordan, certainly at a young age, stepped up to that.”