Jordan Spieth joins Patrick McDonald on Travelers Championship week to talk his 2017 bunker shot, the nitty gritty of his golf game and getting back to the top of the sport.

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Golf on CBS Podcast with Shane Bacon & company delivers expert insight, sharp analysis, and behind-the-scenes stories from the PGA Tour every Tuesday. The show breaks down the biggest events, preview upcoming tournaments, and bring you unfiltered conversations with golf’s biggest names — all with the trusted voice of CBS Sports.

ladies and gentlemen welcome to the Golf on CBS YouTube page patrick here and we have a very special conversation for you all out there we got the time to spend a few minutes with three-time major champion Travelers Championship winner and perhaps alltime wild boy himself Jordan Spe so let’s kick it off uh to our conversation here we now welcome on three-time major champion and of course 2017 Travelers Championship winner Jordan Spith jordan feel like we got to start with that 2017 tournament being that you’re back in Cromwell where would you rank that bunker shot I guess in terms of alltime short game shots or recovery shots of yours uh it’s not super high on the difficulty level but it was definitely the coolest probably the coolest shot I’ve ever hit um in a tournament just given the amphitheater setting the amount of people the reaction our reaction you know what it meant i mean it was uh but yeah as far as difficulty goes it there’s a reason I hit it in that bunker after I hit a bad T- shot it was like all right if we put it in here it’s not that bad of a shot certainly making it requires a bit of luck but um right place right time and uh yeah it’s a moment that whenever I come back here you know I see it see pictures of it or or it gets replayed or something and I just get jacked up it’s awesome do you have a number one on the uh difficulty scale that comes to mind i feel like every year I see someone else or my own or from somewhere and I’m like man that had to be a top five ever but um I I can’t think of any right now off the top of my head um but yeah I mean the difficulty level I I mean Stephen Gerard hit one um or sorry Ryan Gerard hit one had one when I played with him in the final round this year at San Antonio that I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better up and down uh than the one he had on 12 on Sunday ended up finishing second so um that’s the first one that comes to mind it wasn’t mine but I was in the group and it was absolutely insane punched a four iron through a bunker from 50 yards out of the desert purposely landed in the lip of the bunker funnels out to like 8 feet it’s blowing like 30 35 miles an hour he makes makes the putt continues his momentum and and shoots under par and moves all the way up to second it was wild damn we’ll have to we’ll have to look that one up speaking of escapes uh you almost decapitated a guy there at Mirfield Village uh on number one and it reminded me like on number four at Oakmont there were those galleries on the right that people were hitting over out of the rough i’m c I’m curious from your guys perspective has there ever been a moment where you’re standing over the ball and you’re like maybe I should get them to move back and you just you go anyways yeah yeah there honestly I had more on um I had some on five at Memorial this year where you’re laying up to the right side on the par five being in the right rough and you’re like “Well this lie’s terrible i have a nine iron out but it it could hit somebody if it doesn’t you know it doesn’t fly the way I want it to.” I mean most of the time if it’s a decently clean lie we’re we got a pretty good idea but it’s it’s the ones where you got like the one on number one there i had it you know above my feet in the thick rough and you’re like it should come out way left but if I thin it which I did you know it’s not going to come out left it’s not going to come out high i I really didn’t think much about those people i just mis hit it um so it’d be kind of like someone in the proam we we we watch people get hit every week in the proam um and they you know it it kind of felt like that where I was like “Well I hit that very much not the way I wanted to.” And those people definitely thought I was going to hit it better so um when I saw a replay of it I mean I I I remember it i remember hitting it be like because I needed it to get up in the air with this guy’s head i was like “Please climb please climb.” And it just got over him um and then when I’ve seen the videos since like from from you know where they were it’s uh it it’s a little scary looking but um yeah got got lucky to get through and made a par it made it all worth it yeah tidy tidy par there um I saw you grinding after your rounds pretty good there at at Oakmont driving range seemed like a lot of fairway woods you were hitting um I am curious what uh what are you working on right now with the swing really uh nerd out for us here well I I really had unbelievable control in the first round um and I did all week at Oakmont leading into it and I just picked it up in the first round i’m like man this is going to be awesome and then kind of maybe number three of the first round I just got into my bad habit of picking the club up with my hands off the ball and so I take it on a path that takes my hands higher and and and drags on and it’s just what I’ve been fighting all year to try to get out of that I bad habits I’ve had for a couple years now and so I I needed to go try to fix it after on the range and I I really didn’t get a hold of it until um till after Friday’s round unfortunately so I played you know some some poor golf off of just structural um issues that I was trying to fix um on on th on Friday and then uh struck it a lot better on the weekend once I kind of had the time to to almost overdo some motions and and when you go to when I the mistakes I’m making the you know the the easiest ones to get off on are really three-woods off the ground so even though I may have been hitting like threewoods off the ground it it was with the intent that if I do it well with a three-wood off the ground I’ll do it well with any other club so it wasn’t exactly to like oh I I need to work on this club by any means i only had a couple of those throughout the whole week there so I’m trying to get trying to get nice and connected off the ball and turned early that takes my hands um my hand path deeper keeps my right elbow lower and let the club just kind of set where it wants to set um which is which is a place that I’ve played great golf from in the past and and I’m teetering on getting back there i’m closer than I’ve been in a long time to to being there and that’ll the problem is right now still I just when I get off it’s at a level that’s you know we all get off dayto day things change but if you want it you know to get off by one or two I’m still getting off by three or four just in you know just reversing bad habits so um you know I went from having maybe one really good um one really good ball striking day or really good um mechanics early in the season and three where I had to fight through now I’m kind of at flipped it to like three and one and um you know if I can just keep on working leaning leaning leaning on it um and working on the right things keep kind of putting money in the same same bank just kind of adding to it then uh you know that consistency will be the difference maker on on really contending week in and week out how uh how hard has it been for you to kind of balance the long-term goals and shortterm expectations coming off your off season it wasn’t hard the first few months and then once we’ve gotten post Augusta and you start you know you start tasting kind of um you know some success you start start thinking okay actually yeah I’m I feel like my wrist is healthy i feel like I can practice the way I want to and then I I’m hitting it really well and and I’m this shot’s getting easier and better it’s harder to look long term i just want it to obviously work out right away and um that is the biggest challenge right now especially as I get towards the end of the season i’m outside looking in on Ryder Cup i know you know the the Open Championship is such a big event the playoffs are huge um I just uh you know I think staying the course and just trying to inch versus take big strides will leave me um you know in a in a better place short and long term just that’s the biggest challenge is I get off one day and I want to I want to fix it all right away and you know just being okay with the ups and the the downs and recognizing that we’re still going this direction right now and um in our sport you know you don’t momentum is everything and confidence is everything and when you start to gain a little bit even your off days you just you just got to at least maintain where you’re at so that your good ones keep pushing you forward yeah uh I am curious you talked about at the PGA how you you’ve turned into a much better driver of the golf ball uh compared to maybe earlier in your career is that encouraging or discouraging this kind of evolution of your game where it’s like holy crap you’ve picked up a ton of speed you’re a really good driver but maybe some aspects of your game have have lagged behind a little bit no I think it’s encouraging because um if your driver is a weapon you know the rest of the stuff I know I can be i I’ve had data that suggests that I could be the best in the world at most every other category so I know I can um and once you drive it well consistently then you start Yeah then you start putting your attention elsewhere i mean a lot of it has to do with improved technology i mean my these titleless drivers are are insane now um and I would say half of my increase in speed is just off technology um and then the other half is just off you know obviously building a little bit of strength over the years but I didn’t try to chase speed so a lot of it just has to do with confidence right you when your window goes from here to here you know you start feeling more comfortable about swinging harder so um there’s uh I would call it half and half i’m not going to take credit for gaining a ton of speed when the technology has been that much better um but yeah I mean it’s it’s one of those like I’ve I feel like my wedge game is significantly better this year than it was last year and I know why and it’s all structural so once these mechanics get down it brings back you know some of my offspe wedges a lot of these um short iron shots that you know I like to feel that I can specialize in and um and kind of the long clubs now are have an opportunity to be better than they’ve been before so I think it’s more of an opportunity than a than an issue especially given you know I know why other parts of the game suffered and I know how to fix them and it’s just taking a little bit of time yeah uh speaking of I I guess one one last part of the game we haven’t talked about is your putting seems like you’ve gone through maybe some different stances throughout the year I guess a ways to put it you you had like almost a Michelle Wii tabletop era i’m not not that far uh but you you’ve been like rigid at times natural at other times what uh what are you working on on the greens right now in particular well this last off season I um started to make a transition into getting my ey line correct which it never had even when I was um you know statistically the best putter in the world um I always had kind of my head you know a little little cockeyed um and I was trying to make a transition to uh a straight ey line which to me made everything open up a ton so there was just a big big setup adjustments but I had the time in the offseason and I had four weeks between when I could start putting and when I could start hitting balls postsurgery that um I figured hey this I can nail it in um and it was pretty good i I really just was trying to match posturally and my and my um you know where my grip’s located uh how I I needed to get my left thumb more on top of the grip there’s just a lot of stuff in setup as you mentioned I had messed around with the last few years and was all right let’s just do one and um you know let’s get it let’s get it at least standing and the same distance away the same kind of postural alignment that you know I’ve historically done when I’ve put it at my best and then from there um you know I’ll at least get to see where the stroke’s at and what needs to be worked on so um it’s still you know it’s still a work in progress um you know I don’t I kind of the last few weeks I’ve gone away from the eyline shift that I’ve been doing all year and just kind of gone to what looks correct to me um and that’s helped some mid-range putting um where uh and then on I’m just trying to get better rise in the putter going back i just have some habits of um it’s it’s hand path habits uh that I’m trying to kind of offset a little bit but I like having a significant stroke feel i always have um at my best I’ve I’ve teetered between heavy cut feel heavy draw feel i mean these are things that are you know I’m moving the table you know a degree in path but to me they feel like 10 but I like it um it’s something to commit to and under pressure you know I feel like I can almost feel an end range of something and it doesn’t move it much which is nice um so I’m trying to get back to to that stage by fixing a lot of the little things and there’s one thing to do in the offseason it’s another to do it under pressure you know at a US Open and you start to see where things are at and and and then lean on what what needs more work all right we’ll get you out of here with this one little little different speed off speed pitch for you uh why do you love golf well because the ball’s in my hand and I can and I’m the only one that can control the outcome so I firsthand see the work that puts in is what what you get out um and it inspires me to set goals work my butt off and then there’s no better feeling than accomplishing something that you know you prepared for and when the ball’s in your hand you get the last shot and you pull it off it’s the greatest feeling and I think golf’s the only place that provides that for you right on all right we appreciate you brother thanks see you guys

9 Comments

  1. Hopefully he can win a couple tournaments on the Korn ferry tour. I don't think he will keep his card much longer. Fun to watch play though

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