Jordan Spieth on track for grand slam with a dodgy swing

Gary Player says Jordan Spieth has “a noticeable fault” in his swing which makes you wonder just how good he could be.

Jordan Spieth reveals the kink in his swing at Royal Birkdale, with his left arm bent at impact. Picture: AP.

Gary Player says Jordan Spieth has “a noticeable fault” in his swing. The player, himself, says his putting has been off this year. “Choker” obits were being written at Royal Birkdale. All of which makes you wonder just how good he will be if he ever sorts out his problems.

Spieth’s Open denouement was made remarkable by his near-implosion and the bloody-minded recovery. It takes him to the cusp of the career grand slam and an unprecedented feat. If he wins the US PGA Championship at Quail Hollow in North Carolina next month, he will be the youngest player to win all four majors, just weeks after turning 24. Tiger Woods did not manage it until he was three months older. Jack Nicklaus was 26 and Player was 29. Go back further and Gene Sarazen and Ben Hogan were positively elderly 30 and 40-somethings.

“I’ve never been more confident of anybody winning the grand slam as I am about Spieth,” Player said after the Open.

Player would not elaborate on the fault in Spieth’s swing.

“I am shocked that his coach can’t see it,” Player said. “He stands there every day and they can’t see what he is doing.”

Many, however, have pointed out the American bends his left arm at impact quite significantly, which causes the face of the club to open up.

“It’s not for me to say in public what he is doing but, by crikey, I’d give anything to spend half an hour with Spieth,” Player said.

“I really believe this sincerely: if I could spend half an hour with Spieth, he might turn out to be the best player the world has ever known. Because he is a machine with putting. A machine. His short game is a machine. Can you imagine? A man goes into a tournament saying ‘I don’t know where the ball is going. I am frustrated. I am here with my B game’ and wins.”

Spieth has spent much of his five-year professional career sidestepping comparisons with Woods. “What those guys have done has transcended the sport,” he said of the Woods-Nicklaus axis. “In no way, shape or form do I think I’m anywhere near that.”

Yet the statistics are beginning to separate him from his peers even if nobody is dominating.

It has taken Spieth 19 majors to get to the three-quarter mark. Only Nicklaus can beat that, with 16. Other prodigies, such as Woods, Arnold Palmer and Rory McIlroy, took 20, 21 and 24 steps respectively to reach this stage.

“It’s incredible,” Spieth said after losing the Open lead and regaining it on a dramatic back nine. “It’s a life goal of mine. It’s a career goal. Growing up I just wanted to be able to play in major championships and compete with the best in the world, and things have happened very quickly. And it’s good and bad, because a lot comes with it. A lot more attention versus just being able to kind of go about your own thing. And I never realised how underrated that was. I wanted to be in this position but then it becomes harder when it doesn’t go your way.”

McIlroy can certainly tell him how hard it can become. When he won the Open at Royal Liverpool in 2014, he was left needing the Masters to complete his set. He went to Augusta in 2015 with a fanfare, but after one round was seven strokes behind Spieth. After two rounds the lead had morphed to 12. McIlroy finished fourth but that belied the gulf as the Texan took his first major.

Last year McIlroy started the third round at the Masters in the final pairing with Spieth, but a 77 sent him hurtling from contention and into some public soul-searching. “I don’t think it’s anything to do with my game,” he said. “I think it’s more me mentally. I’m trying to deal with the pressure of it and the thrill of the achievement.’’ This year, he tied for seventh.

McIlroy will play his 35th major at Quail Hollow, a course where his past triumphs have included a round of 61, but Spieth’s remarks this week were telling. He said he had “probably” downplayed the impact of last year’s Masters meltdown when he turned a five-stroke lead with nine to play into defeat by Danny Willett. “All of a sudden it was in my head, ‘How could I not close out a five-stroke lead with nine to play?’ I was so confident and, all of a sudden, the wheels have kind of come off,” he said. “I knew another major would be the one thing that would (get me) completely over the hill.”

In some ways Spieth’s Masters misery was easier to ride out than the time McIlroy imploded at ­Augusta in 2011. Spieth had ­already won the Green Jacket, after all. For McIlroy the ghosts of falling from first to 15th after a round of 80 linger every year that he goes back. It is considered the perfect course for his game, but he has now played almost double the number of Spieth.

Other great players are still waiting for the grand slam. Phil Mickelson has played 99 majors and still needs the US Open; hence the significance of this year’s absence to attend his daughter’s graduation was magnified. Others, such as Arnold Palmer and Lee Trevino, will forever be one short.

What Spieth’s win means, ­allied to the impending shift of the 2019 US PGA Championship to May, is that there will be chances aplenty coming up. If none of them completes the quartet, one of Spieth, McIlroy and Mickelson will have a chance to do so at seven of the next eight majors. Nobody has done the calendar grand slam, although Bobby Jones did the old pre-Masters version in 1930 and Woods held all four titles simultaneously. There are caveats to grand slam talk — Woods and Nicklaus had three career grand slams each and it was impossible to do that in 1953 when the Open and US PGA clashed.

Yet Spieth has already come close to the authentic grand slam. In 2015 he won the Masters and the US Open, and was one stroke and three inches from a playoff at the Open at St Andrews before finishing second to Jason Day at the US PGA Championship.

He is not what was reported in 2015. He has weaknesses, a temper and he said his head had gone on in the final round, but last year he topped the putting stats. This year he is 37th. If he gets that right then history may be coming soon.

The Times