Jordan Spieth doesn’t know what he’ll do for an encore.
Then again, he has 20 or so years to figure it out.
“There are places I can get better. Ball striking-wise, tee ball I can get stronger, I can hit it further, my short game I want to keep consistent, keep exactly where it’s at,” Spieth said Sunday after putting a cherry on top of one of the best seasons in PGA Tour history by winning The Tour Championship by Coca-Cola and the FedExCup at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta.
“As far as dissecting that, it’s a little early. I’ll probably do that a little bit more in the offseason and figure out what our weaknesses are.”
With a final-round 69, Spieth was four clear of the field in winning his fifth title of the season, two of which came in the Masters and the U.S. Open.
He won the money title with a single-season record of $12,030,465, and with the $10 million FedExCup bonus, he became the first $22 million man in Tour history. He returned to No. 1 in the world, won the Vardon Trophy for lowest adjusted scoring average, and left little doubt he’ll earn the PGA Tour’s player of the year award as voted by his peers.
Oh, and at 22, he became the youngest player since Horton Smith in 1929 to win five times in a season. He’s also the youngest to win the FedExCup and The Tour Championship.
Spieth will play next week in the Presidents Cup in South Korea. After that, he might play in the WGC-HSBC Champions in Shanghai the first week of November. He has confirmed he will defend titles in the Australian Open on Nov. 26-29 and the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas the following week. He will start his 2016 campaign in Hawaii in the Hyundai Tournament of Champions.
As for his past, it was a little more than a month ago when people started wondering what was wrong with Spieth. As Jason Day started pulverizing golf courses, winning the RBC Canadian Open, the PGA Championship and two of the first three events of the FedExCup Playoffs, Spieth was caught up in the tour de force, started forcing matters and missed consecutive cuts for the first time in his pro career to start the playoffs.
Heading into Atlanta, it was just as important for Spieth to get his head straight as it was to get his putter working again. Grinding from early Monday morning with caddie Michael Greller and coach Cameron McCormick by his side, Spieth had great practice sessions to cure his troubles.
“I made some poor decisions earlier in the playoff stretch because mentally I wasn’t in shape, meaning I was approaching this No. 1 in the World Ranking, the end of the major season, these expectations, I was managing them like a sprint instead of looking at it (like a marathon),” Spieth said. “ ... I sat back and did a lot of thinking, did a lot of talking with Cameron and Michael to try and figure out how to approach this week to not worry about any of that stuff. And that’s how we did it the whole year. How do we get that one trophy at hand and not worry about anything else? And for whatever reason, everything else was slipping into my head for a couple of those weeks.”
Greller told Spieth that he won The Tour Championship with his head. Spieth wasn’t comfortable over the ball all week but managed to keep his head in the game instead of losing his mind. He scrambled remarkably, bounced back impressively and putted, as he has most of the year, extraordinarily.
“What this means for me this week is it’s validation to the year. It’s validation to these playoffs, and how can you go through the lows of a season so quickly after you’re so high,” Spieth said. “People can give up on you easily. And to not care about that, to worry about our own stuff, and to come into the brightest stages and perform is going to give me a lot of confidence going forward because there’s going to be ups and there’s going to be downs.
“I know that we can play at this level, even when we don’t have our best stuff. And it gives me a lot of confidence going forward for the next 20 years.”
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