This is the course that intimidates. This is the tournament that awes. This is the place that melts the brains of even the world’s greatest golfers, and should you need any reminding of that, feel free to Google “McIlroy,” “triple bogey” and “Thurston, why is there a golf ball in my margarita?”
Jordan Spieth appears impervious to all of that.
From his mouth Friday: “I feel comfortable this week. I haven’t really felt nervous. I slept well last night. I’m going to be just hanging out with friends and family and taking it easy and hopefully acting like nothing’s going on.”
Then he laughed, which immediately dispelled any rumors that he was a cyborg.
It's not just that Spieth, 21-year-old humanoid, held the lead in the Masters for the second consecutive day. It's how he held the second-round lead. It's what he's doing to this course, to this field, to history. The azaleas seem a little pinker from humiliation.
Augusta National can't touch Jordan Spieth. He is going through birdies like the rest of us go through potato chips. That was good. I think I'll have another.
Through 36 holes, he has 15 birdies and one bogey. One … bogey.
He shot 64 on Thursday. That was one off the course record. He shot 66 on Friday. That gave him a 36-hole total of 14-under 140 and eclipsed Raymond Floyd’s 39-year-old record of 141.
Who does this?
“Seems like there’s been quite a few guys that have had success at a young age here,” Spieth said. “I think Seve (Ballesteros) won it when he was 23 and Tiger (Woods) at 21. And obviously I’m not comparing myself to those guys in any way, but I’m saying it’s only taken them a time or two to figure it out to get into contention and to close out the tournament. It means that it can be done.”
Spieth speculates that the potential “awe factor” of Augusta National left him when he played the course for the first time six months before last year’s Masters. There is evidence to support what otherwise would seem such an absurd statement.
He has played six rounds in the Masters and here’s his placing after each: 12th, third, first, second, first, first.
He has a five-shot lead over Charley Hoffman, who has had the greatest two days (67-68) that almost nobody has paid attention to. There is such a gap between No. 1 and No. Everything Else that if the Masters had set the cut at 10 shots off the lead, only 11 players would be advancing to the weekend and 86 would be going home.
No young player has torched these fairways and greens to this extent since Woods, who as a 21-year-old won the 1997 Masters by 12 strokes at a 18 under (a record that looks a little wobbly today). But even Woods was a relatively mortal 8 under with a three-shot lead after two rounds.
“There’s the big difference. He’s put out a big enough gap between (him) and the rest of the pack,” Woods said.
It’s dangerous to assume anything from one round to the next in any tournament, let alone the Masters. But Spieth is doing everything right and everything better than everybody else.
His tee shots are laser stripes down the middle of the fairway. His short game has been great, his putting almost perfect. As strong as he was on the greens, he left three potential birdies on the course Friday: a 4-footer on No. 7, a 5-footer on No. 9 and a 7-footer on 18.
Spieth looked upset after the miss on 18, when the ball rolled straight and just past the cup on the left. But he said he was “surprised” more than anything. Like the rest of us, maybe he had just come to believe he couldn’t miss a shot.
“I wanted it bad,” he said. “I wasn’t trying to make a statement or reach a certain point. I didn’t know what any of those scores meant in history or anything like that. I just knew I had a good look at a birdie and a good read on it.”
Didn’t matter. Spieth received standing ovations on multiple greens, including the 18th.
“That’s something you can only dream about, and it’s Friday, too,” he said. “I’d like to have the same thing happening Sunday.”
The guy has been so good that, as playing partner Billy Horschel cracked to him Thursday: “You need a tape recorder that just plays, ‘Nice hole, Jordan,’ on each tee box.”
Spieth’s final birdie came on No. 15. He had laid up before the pond that fronts the 15th green, then hit a wedge to within 8 feet for the birdie putt. The only thing that went wrong on that hole: Henrik Stenson hit his tee shot into the pine straw to the left of the fairway, then hit a tree, then threw a fit and broke his club over his leg, then hit into the water.
Meanwhile, Spieth waited.
“The only problem was I had to use the restroom,” Spieth said. “That was the only problem I had in my head.”
If that’s the only thing he has to overcome, it will be a good weekend.
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