Jordan Spieth’s ’10 years’ of success and the magic of Vijay Singh

Welcome! Where are you, he asks. I call this the 9th weekend. Think of it as a warm-up for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We will have thoughts. We will have some tips. We will have tweets. But only nine in all, though sometimes perhaps more and sometimes perhaps less. Who am I? The sections below tell some of the story. I can be reached at nick.piastowski@golf.com.

I listened to Drake’s song “One Dance” yesterday.

And “Ophelia” from the Lumineers. And “Starboy” for the Weeknd. Worms of the last decade. Those who after turning on the car radio and hearing them, find their way into your normal activities. (Sing it with me now, grocers: Oh, Ophelia, where’s the turkey place?)

I got the songs after hearing a few more as part of a 2016 social media challenge, where people have been sharing pictures and the like ever since. Good. Me? Ten years ago, my wife and I were in Omaha – for 11 months. It was our most exciting year, so far. We quit our jobs. I am employed by the youth. The house has been sold. Two cars were sold. We are looking in the rearview mirror of life and the way we knew it. And on Dec. 30, two lifelong Midwesterners and two cats somehow find themselves in Brooklyn. Life happens like that sometimes. There was a plan. But usually not. It was meant to be. He continued to move.

A world away, Jordan Spieth was doing some of that, too.

Do you remember him then? He holds a golf club in the palm of his hand like you would a golf ball. Last year, he won the Masters, the US Open and the Tour Championship, before following it up with two victories in 2016 and three in 2017. How many more majors could he win? Any number seemed possible. But zero is what he got. Hmm. A drought came. Injury. You are searching. Questions, mainly between:

Would he ever come back?

To some extent, he already has. He has won twice since 2021. He feels fully recovered from surgery on his troublesome left wrist. On Thursday, after opening his ’26 season at the Sony Open, Spieth sounded optimistic. He thinks he can trust his swing. There is more, however. He has been thinking about the last 10 years. And for the next 10 years. He kept thinking about what he should have done.

And that’s what he wants to do going forward.

“I’m trying to enjoy myself a lot…” Spieth said. “It’s been a bad situation the last few years, and if I’m not enjoying myself out here—I mean, I know 10 years from now I’m going to wish I had the last 10 years.

“All in all, if you’re not enjoying yourself what are you doing here? All that together should really help.”

You shouldwhich means we will find. But if you want real signs of rebirth from Spieth, and if you want to believe that Spieth can be Spieth again, this is what you hope to hear.

Excerpt from “One Dance”:

Baby, I love your style.

“I mean if you’re not there,” Spieth said, “and you’re not enjoying the fact that you’re living your dream and if it feels like work and hard work and all that, and I’m telling you there is and you really shouldn’t be. There’s no need.”

Let’s see if we can find eight more items for the 9th weekend.

2. From the same interview, the video below was also great.

3. This story here, from Fried Egg Kevin Van Valkenburg, too, was great. It’s about Spieth – and nostalgia.

One weekend takeaway

4. Vijay Singh didn’t just take advantage of the PGA Tour fee exemption this year.

He cashes checks with it. The 62-year-old is two under two rounds into the Sony Open, and will play at the weekend.

And his Instagram account also wrote this:

One takeaway from the previous week

5. Brooks Koepka is returning to the PGA Tour. And Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm and Camerson Smith aren’t — yet. OK. And it’s OK.

So when does the civil war end?

Will it be like that?

Is Koepka’s move derailing LIV? Or is this just like the free agent trade, of which baseball has seen few? (My apologies to anyone who doesn’t come out in Dodger blue.)

I’m sure you have thoughts. For me, a few quotes this week are worth noting. On Wednesday, during LIV’s season preview event, LIV vice president of team business Katie O’Reilly had this to say, when asked when LIV’s 13 teams would begin selling stakes:

“Our goal is to build 13 billion franchises. That’s our goal. Are we there yet? No. But right now we’re building the foundation for that.” (Front Office Sports’ David Rumsey wrote more about this story, and you can read his story here.)

Then there are Rory McIlroy’s thoughts on LIV following the Koepka news. He was interviewed at the DP World Tour’s Dubai Invitational by The Telegraph’s James Corrigan, and you can read his story here:

“It’s not like they’ve made any big signings this year, right? They haven’t signed anyone that moves the needle and I don’t think they will. I mean, they could re-sign Bryson for hundreds of millions of dollars, but even if they did, that doesn’t change their product, right? They’d be paying the exact same thing as Brook.

Another takeaway from the week is that

6. The video below is great. In this week’s Korn Ferry Tour’s Bahamas Golf Classic, Roger Sloan’s tournament went as follows:

– Started as an alternative

– Entered the field as players withdrew, including Noah Goodwin

– He arrived in the Bahamas the day before the tournament, but the tournament hotel was booked and he didn’t have a caddy

– I got a message from his regular caddy saying, “Hey, I got a boy” – and that boy could sing and he had room

— Wait, why did Goodwin choose the few lines above? Because the “guy” who could help was Goodwin’s father, Jeff

– Sloan finished second

It’s a golf story that interests me

7. The video below, starting at the 22 mark, was great. Golf. College football. Nick Saban said.