After an injury scare last week, Jordan Spieth looks like he might be turning a corner.
Spieth said that his surgically repaired left wrist “locked up” last week after hitting an awkward shot out of a bunker in his opening round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, his first competitive action since last August. Spieth said that, afterward, he tried to manipulate his swing to play away from the pain, before came to the realization that that wasn’t going to help him.
So he labored through it, tying for 69th in the limited-field event, but his final-round, bogey-free 67 gave him something to build on.
“I was back to the status quo Sunday on all the stuff that I had been doing,” he said, “and it paid off there.”
It continued Thursday in Phoenix, too, where Spieth carded a 3-under 68 to open at TPC Scottsdale.
He missed just three greens and felt as though he “left a few out there” with a new putter that he put in play for the first round in the desert.
“It makes me feel like I’m close to back to where I want to be,” he said.
In the middle of a three-week stretch as he marks his long-awaited return from injury, Spieth said he’s been toying with the idea of putter change for a while. He’s looking for a model that helps him align better and come off the face smoother, and he said he has a “few options” with him – so it may not be his last change of the week. He took 32 putts in the first round, holing 93 feet worth of putts (much of which came on a 56-footer on the sixth hole).
“I’m just trying to figure out what helps me stroke it the best,” he said, “and I’ll use that one.”
