As Jordan Spieth walked up the hill to the eighteenth green at Augusta around lunchtime on Friday, it seemed almost as if he were playing a tournament of his own. At fourteen under par, the twenty-one-year-old phenom from Texas was nine shots clear of his closest challenger at the time, Ernie Els, and he had just lasered another iron shot directly over the flagstick, to set up a seven-foot birdie putt.
After taking the applause of the spectators (whom Augusta National insists on calling the “patrons”), he missed the putt. That was a surprise. But he tapped in to complete a round of sixty-six, which followed the sixty-four he had shot on Thursday. With thirty-six holes left, on a perilous golf course that is likely to play considerably harder over the weekend, it’s too early to award Spieth the green jacket. (Later in the day, Charley Hoffman, a thirty-eight-year-old journeyman, got to within five shots of him, at nine under par. And three very talented players—Dustin Johnson, Justin Rose, and Paul Casey—are tied for third, seven shots back.) But Spieth has dominated the first two days of the Masters in a manner that no one ever has done before—not Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, or Tiger Woods. His score of fourteen under par is the lowest thirty-six-hole total ever at the tournament, and it ties the lowest total in any major championship.
Which
raises the obvious question: What makes Spieth so good? Unlike the
young Nicklaus or Woods, or his twenty-five-year-old rival Rory McIlroy,
Spieth doesn’t hit the ball prodigious distances: according to his P.G.A. Tour profile,
his average drive this season has gone 293.5 yards, which places him
fifty-fifth on the list of tour players. His club-head speed when using
his driver is just over a hundred and fourteen miles an hour—about ten
miles slower than the very fastest swings, such as the one wielded by
Bubba Watson, who has won the Masters twice.