Jordan Spieth, over the first five holes of Muirfield Village Golf Club, is a five-over-two. He hit 10 putts, missing birdie looks from 19, 21, 14, 50 and 13 feet, so when he left the 6th hole with 11 putts in the most unlikely ways, his coverage of the event felt as accurate as his golf ball roll.
“Golf right there.”
Golf played golf, and Spieth Spiethed the 6th green in Thursday’s first round of the Memorial Championship. In the end, Spieth hit the par-4, but how he played his third hole is worth checking out. After his tee shot finished right of the fairway bunker, he hit his second shot to the right of the green, which kept him out of trouble but left him with a geometry problem.
With the pin on the left side of the green and a dramatic right-to-left slope toward him, the question Spieth had was how far to the right he should aim for the 63-foot putt. During practice on Wednesday, he said he tried the putt twice.
“And I didn’t hit it well,” Spieth said.
But he had an idea of what it would do. On those putts, he said, he’ll try to find where “the drop line is high and, you know, see the pitch mark or something where my ball needs to roll.” On Thursday, Spieth rolled until his back was facing the hole.
Then he struck.
After 3 seconds, Spieth began to slowly move behind it. This gave him a good look at the break, should he need to hit another putt, although it also appeared that he had headed his ball home, which would have been a move of the season. “You can’t see where you hit it when you’re playing that many breaks,” said Spieth, “so a lot of times I just walk to the high ground and see.”
15 seconds, Spieth waiting.
On the second 14th, his ball went into the 4 o’clock position on the hole. Then it disappeared.
One putt.
As of late Thursday afternoon, a video of it on the PGA Tour’s X account has drawn more than three million views, and you can watch it below.
“So I hit the putt where I wanted to go, and I thought it was maybe a foot or an overall too short, and as it kept going down, it was like, it might end up there, in the hole,” Spieth said. “Then it fell to the side of the lip, which was good.
“I had good chances the first five holes and I felt like I hit some good putts that just missed. And then, of course, golf right there, right? So hang in there, you get rewarded.”
From there, Spieth golfed an even-par 71, putting him four behind the leaders.
“It’s good to just get into the red on this golf course before anything else,” Spieth said. “Because you don’t feel like you’ve done it – you don’t feel like, like on the 7th, I didn’t feel like I needed to try to get ahead on the third shot, I didn’t have to try to get back to the pin. It shouldn’t matter, but if we’re used to shooting under par when we play, it’s great when you get that patient, and it really helps.
“I hate it when the golf course hits me, so I always want to be ahead of it. And obviously here that’s different than the last tournament I played, but it’s kind of a mindset thing. So I felt like, I had a really good game plan and I stuck to it today. But that being a bonus makes you think, okay, if I was trying to hit a couple of shots now. I expected you to get that one.”
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