Media Center Interviews
April 4, 2025
Second Round Interview with Jordan Spieth
Q. Jordan, obviously not the way you wanted to finish, but can you talk about just overall you've obviously played well the last two rounds, you've got to be pretty happy with your play?
JORDAN SPIETH: I didn't play very well today by any means. I had less control of the ball and was hanging in there for a little while on my front nine. Then I really, I lost four shots chipping from this rough around the greens on the last nine holes. Each one, it's like, well, it could jump or it could felt like I was just picking heads or tails and just losing each one. Chips felt fine and just came out completely different than what I thought. Sometimes that happens, the shorter the rough the weirder the situation, versus if it's thick you know exactly what you've got to do. So that's really incredibly frustrating because it's like those are they're right there.
Yeah, those last three holes playing out of the fairway, reachable par 5 off the tee box, reachable par 5 and a pretty good number at the last, knowing that the lead's going to be somewhere around 10, maybe 9, 10 under, I really felt like I needed to get to 7 to have a chance.
I've got to get better at closing these rounds out on Fridays. I had the same problem happen in Tampa. It's not like a trend or anything, they just were random things each day, and this one happened to be misjudging chips which is normally a specialty of mine. I'm just a little a little, you know, how do you feel when you're on a bad run of cards and like, man, on the last hole I'm like surely this is going to jump a little bit and run and then that one spins. Like I just never would have guessed it would spin. Misjudging them stinks.
Q. Aside from that, this is a place you've had a lot of success. Is there something about this course specifically that brings out a little creativity? Not that you typically don't have a lot, but you seem to do even more special things here.
JORDAN SPIETH: If I'm driving the ball well you just have to drive the ball well here. If you're driving it well, then you should have quite a few good looks.
The other thing is you've got to play in the wind, you've got to flight the ball some, you've got to throw some in the air, you've got to just be a little creative in the height that you hit shots, sometimes the curve. It's normally just the Texas wind, and the times I played well here I drove it you know, I'd been driving it well.
So I think that's it. It's not like the green complexes are pretty funky, so some pins look pretty good and others look terrible to me as far as like committing to a shot. It's a little mixed bag. It's not like I come here and I'm like, oh, yeah this looks easy for some reason. It's a hard golf course with a premium on putting the ball in the fairway. With the rough so low, some of these back pins it's almost better to be in this rough because you land in the middle of the green and it runs up. The times that I've actually been in the rough, I've actually hit better approach shots in a weird way. Having said that, I'd still take 14 fairways tomorrow.
Q. Jordan, physically are you able to grind and practice as much as you want to or are you on a pitch count still?
JORDAN SPIETH: No, I mean, the only pitch count I would be on is recognizing how busy the next 12 weeks are, less about but at the same time, prioritizing this weekend, and next week would be huge just given the position I'm in, the weather that's coming. Even if you are five or six back, at least we have the conditions to make up some ground. Yeah, being a little off today, I'll be out there in a half hour and grinding pretty hard.
Q. One more. I know you're like 20 minutes out of a round, but I saw you in the fall up at Brookhaven and you gave me a very specific timeline where you wanted to be, where you thought you should be by January 1st. If you look back at that now, where are you on that timeline? Have you surpassed what you thought you could do after the injury?
JORDAN SPIETH: I think that I'm very pleased with how I approached the rehab. I think, like I wake up in the morning and my wrists do not feel the same comparably. Like my left wrist, like just to close my fingers it feels like it's twice the size but after 10, 15 minutes it's fine. It doesn't hurt, it's not sore, it just is so tight every morning after sleeping. So I think I'm a little surprised that that's staying that way.
But I'm also pleasantly surprised at the performance from my first event at Pebble I had a couple shots in the first round where I was like, oh, no. Just bunker shots, flop shots. I've had the occasional one here or there since, but I get in thick rough or I get in shots where there's rocks around, whatever, and I'm thinking the same way I thought before I had surgery, so I'm very pleasantly surprised at that.
My speed's come back mainly this week for the first time. I've been about three or four miles an hour short with the driver off of last year and my speed's come back gradually. I was at 68, 69 ball speed a week before Pebble and I'm at 78, 79 this week, so that's a huge difference, which is nice. Most of it came back because I started to play and warmed up, but then for whatever reason it's faster this week.
Q. Were you using the Vokey (inaudible) yesterday?
JORDAN SPIETH: Yeah, same. Is that the newest one?
Q. Yeah.
JORDAN SPIETH: Yeah.
Q. Would you tell me the difference between that and the 6 that you used to win the Travelers?
JORDAN SPIETH: Well, my understanding is they continue with well, my lob wedge should be pretty similar. I try to have them make it the same like it's always been and I'm a little particular about how he grinds it.
But my understanding in the improvement of wedges is moving some of the center of gravity around to where a lot of the full shots end up with tighter misses. So it would be less about a bunker shot wouldn't make much of a difference from that wedge because it's the same bounce, it's the same grind.
Q. Did you ever change that during in the next coming weeks would you change it
JORDAN SPIETH: No.
Q. because of sand consistency or anything like that?
JORDAN SPIETH: No. So it's interesting, I grew up on intothegrain bermuda. I learned to chip where you had to cover the ball. You hit ball first, you don't use the bounce, so I have no bounce. Obviously you have to strike the ball well or you're going to look pretty bad without any bounce.
But I found I also train bunker shots to hit as close to the ball as possible every time, try to fly it, spin to the hole. There are occasions where you chunk and run, the lie is dependent on that. Well, I don't really have any issues with a low bounce. If I had a high bounce I'd have a harder time on some of the low spinning shots that I like to play around the greens.
So I've actually never experimented with more bounce. If anything, I've tried to get the same amount on a different grind here or there. I think I maybe messed around with one five or six years ago, but very little.
Q. In general, what are the challenges to putting in the Hill Country compared to other golf courses?
JORDAN SPIETH: Well, it's all different. These are overseed greens versus the other course here they didn't overseed, so those greens would putt very different from these even though we're in the same location. These are an overseed that don't get very fast, I think probably because of how much pitch is on a lot of the greens. And overseed's come in tremendously this year, but that just means it plays grainier.
You know, we'll play Hilton Head and it's bermudagrass like this normally is in a couple weeks and it will putt very different because they don't overseed it. Last week in Houston was overseed, I didn't play it. So was Tampa, so was THE PLAYERS. It putts similar to THE PLAYERS here, THE PLAYERS maybe being a little bit quicker. These are some of the slower greens that we'll see all year, but I think a lot of it has to do with the amount of slopes on the greens.
