Jordan Spieth Arrives at Harbour Town Still Smarting from Masters Missed Cut

The 2015 Masters champion had never missed a weekend at Augusta National until last week, but then he couldn't leave.

Sitting on the couch on Saturday morning, Jordan Spieth wanted to be anywhere else then where he was, in Augusta, Georgia.

The 2015 winner of a green jacket, and who many believe is one of the favorites to win the Masters each time he tees it up, missed his first cut in his favorite major and he was in shock.

Traditionally, when the 28-year-old misses a cut, he can’t get out of town fast enough, but this week was different with family and friends coming down to support and cheer him on. He couldn’t just pick up and leave them on Saturday.

Instead, he sat on the couch watching a movie (which days later he can’t recall the name of) and staying away from watching what was the biggest thing in town.

"It really was awful,” Spieth said Tuesday on Hilton Head Island. “It was the worst feeling you could have ever had.”

The maddening part for Spieth is with the exception of a 6-iron at the 10th hole on Friday, he hit every shot where he was looking.

Oddly he parred the 10th, but the par-3 12th and par-4 18th, caused him to go from the fringes of contending to missing the cut with two double bogeys.

On the 12th Spieth took one more club — an 8-iron versus a 9-iron — and aimed left to the safe part of the green, but once he hit the shot the wind came up and turned a shot that should have gone 167 yards into one that carried only 137 yards, hit the front bank and rolled into Rae’s Creek.

When he took his drop, the ball bounced up and came back down into its own pitch mark, similar to what happened to Paul Casey on the 16th hole at the Players Championship.

Ball in a hole, straight into the grain, it was easily a shot that could be chunked and that’s exactly what Spieth did. Hitting a little in front of the ball, he caught it thin, it squirted right and eventually back in the creek.

On the 18th, Spieth didn’t think he could reach the bunkers off the tee, but did and found his ball on the upslope sitting halfway down in the sand.

Chunking a 9-iron, which is all he had, Spieth would spin the downwind third shot off the green and miss the chip to miss the cut.

“I go from being in contention to on the cut line just like that, and I didn't miss a shot,” Spieth said of his situation after the 12th. “So that was really kind of how the week felt it was when I say I played flawless golf on Friday and shot 76. Just some tough luck.”

Because Spieth was in the RBC Heritage field and it’s only a three-hour drive, Spieth drove over on Sunday and played nine holes on one of the courses in Sea Pines and nine holes on another.

Spieth’s major frustration from last week was that he felt he was more confident coming into Augusta this year than in 2018, 2019 or 2020, and while he won in 2021 the week before the Masters he was hitting the ball better this year. Coming to a course with greens he really likes, it was frustrating that he could not make anything happen over the first two days.

“Missed a lot of putts inside of 10 feet, even where I probably hit one putt that I would say was a really bad putt,” Spieth said. “And it really just comes down to scoring, which is just going to be putting and decision making. And just having the holes just a little bit small this spring for me and it stayed that way last week.”

Spieth feels like he is in a good place, happy with his longtime instructor Cameron McCormick and caddie Michael Greller.

The spring has been challenging with son Sammy born last November, but he is adjusting to fatherhood as well.

Yet, Spieth feels he is playing better than last year with some work to do, but he is in a unique place where he’s excited to go out and work on his game because he finds himself getting a little better each day. While that’s the goal, it's not always the reality for tour players.

“I feel in a really good place,” Spieth said. “I'm just pretty tired from the spring and I think I just made a couple of mental errors here or there, but I just got to see a couple of putts go in early in a tournament and I think I’d just start running from there the rest of this year.”