Jordan Spieth’s latest meltdown, a quad-bogey 9 on No. 15, costs him at the Masters
Friday could go down as Spieth’s second-most notorious Masters quad. He made a quadruple-bogey 7 at the par-3 12th hole in the 2016 Masters.
AUGUSTA, Ga. — It was the most agonizing 13 seconds in recent Masters history, but it wasn’t even Jordan Spieth’s worst moment this season.
Spieth, the 2015 Masters champion, was in the second-to-last group on Thursday, puttering along at 2-over, when, after a weather delay pushed starting times back 2½ hours, play was suspended after his 11th hole. Play resumed at 7:50 a.m. Friday. By 10 a.m., Spieth probably wished he’d stayed in bed.
Wind at his back, Spieth went long with his third shot at the par-5 15th hole. He chose to chip into the bank from behind the green to a downhill pin. It was the right play, and a decent shot, but it rolled through the putting surface, reached the collar … then took 13 painful seconds to roll down the steep bank and into the pond in front of the green. As the crowd groaned in unison, the ball inched down the slope, almost stopped twice, picked up steam the last 10 feet, and trundled through the light rough in front of the pond. The patrons sighed.
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(If he’d hit the same shot in 1948 or earlier, the ball would have stayed dry, since the area in front of the green used to be a mild slope down to a small creek.)
Spieth elected to drop shot on the other side of the pond, but he again hit his approach over the back, though this time close enough to putt through the greenside rough. He two-putted for a quadruple-bogey nine.
It tied his worst score on the hole from the first round of the 2017 Masters and pushed him to a 7-over 79, the worst of his 39 rounds at Augusta National. After bogeys on holes 1, 11, 13, and 17 in his second round, Spieth missed the cut for the second time in his 11 Masters appearances, but also the second time in the last three years.
He should have taken his own advice.
“They always say keep it below the hole out here because you normally have a few more options where if you are a touch off you still have a good look at par,” Spieth said Tuesday. “But when you’re above the hole or pin high on a missed green, that precision just — you just have to be significantly better than most weeks.”
This could go down as Spieth’s second-most notorious Masters quad. He made a quadruple-bogey 7 at the par-3 12th hole in the 2016 Masters, the biggest factor in his failed defense of his 2015 win.
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But it wasn’t his biggest mistake of the year.
After the second round of the Genesis Invitational in February, Spieth signed a scorecard that was one stroke better than his actual score and was disqualified.
Spieth, 30, also is dealing with a chronic wrist injury.