Jordan Spieth taught me 10 courses in 45 minutes. Here we are
About halfway through a brain-bending 45-minute distance session with Jordan Spieth, I ask what might be a dumb question.
“If you were to turn off your mind and just swing a golf club, what would happen?”
Spieth doesn’t hesitate, which suggests he’s given this a lot of thought beforehand. That’s always a safe guess with Spieth, who may have the most active mind in professional golf: he has thought about this many times before.
“It can be scary,” he says. “If you say ‘don’t think and just roll’ – I’ve never played like that. I’ve always had a delusional feeling about my regression.”
Spieth explains that he has to have something to focus on as he takes the club or things go wrong.
“On a difficulty level 10 backhand, I always like it to be somewhere like a fourth or fifth of what I can think about. And that usually sets the time. That’s just the back; from there it becomes athletic and you hit the shot. But if I don’t think about anything, I get hurt.”
We’ve been filming the “Warming Up” episodes for two years now, and it’s been the most fun I’ve ever done on this project – a series of bucket list conversations and moments of deprivation. But I’m always greedy, too, keeping Spieth’s name at the top of my wish list from Day 1.
Finally, this winter, thanks to a happy combination of persistence, willingness and planning, we got the big fish: Spieth agreed to spend time with us on a driving tour of his choice – and to open a window into his beautiful golfing mind.
You can watch the full episode below or on YouTube here. But if you’re in learning mode, below you’ll find 10 lessons – about his game, golf in general or life in general – that will stick with me.
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10 lessons from Jordan Spieth
1. Be an athlete and an artist.
Mess around, Spieth said, especially as you start to warm up. He holds a 60-degree wedge and starts with quarter-and-a-half wedge shots, hitting only his first balls 20 yards or so, moving up a few yards at a time.
The key to getting his feel is to vary the types of shots he hits, even at short range.
“They’re not the same,” he says. “I’ll work at different elevations and then when I get to about 60 yards I’ll start hitting three trajectories at 60 yards.”
At the same time, he tries to open the face, make a spin, hit one shot that he hopes he will hit and stop and the other one that he hopes will go higher. He says, he uses different moving planes to try to capture different images.
“I’m just an athlete, I’m a sharp artist, and then as you continue to shoot full time, you can probably control the face of the club better than if you just started doing it from scratch.”
2. Be intentional.
When Spieth first played on the PGA Tour he was a high school phenom with no real warm-up routine. One of the things he learned from watching the pros? Do everything with intention.
“I haven’t been to the gym since I was 16 before [the round]no warm-up, and I could just hit whatever I wanted [on the range]He says: “That was the difference.
3. Practice actual photography from the course.
“There’s a shot you need on certain holes,” Spieth said. Because golf, you don’t know indeed what images will you face when you leave the course. But he knows a few of them: “The par-3s, I’m going to ask for that yardage and I’m going to make sure I hit that club. You always say ‘you’re a second-team All-American;’ [when you hit two balls] that second ball is amazing. Well, I’ll make sure my second ball is the first ball I hit on a par-3. So you try to hit the shot, you see it, you feel it, you know it’s good.”
4. Work the ball into the hole (optional)
Spieth grew up playing in par but now he’s fading a lot. However, at its best it likes to be able to swing it in both directions so it can take on every hole – especially when the PGA Tour likes to put it in the corners.
“They have these pins where it’s like, when you play a fade, sometimes you can’t get it close. It’ll be going around with a mountain on the left pin and you can’t get it close. And that might be fine, but it’s a pet peeve of mine. It makes me sad that I can’t work toward the hole so I can always pull.”
But there’s a defensive tactic Spieth takes to make sure he doesn’t take too much risk as he takes all the pins.
“Every time I hit a draw or a fade, I train myself so that the ball can’t bend too much,” he said. “If it turns a little, I’m on the fat side of the green. If it turns too much, I’m on the short side.”
Under-curving, then, is the goal.
5. Value your 7-iron — it’s the best club.
I liked that Spieth was able to go full golf – swing planes, degrees of rotation, DNA swings, etc. – while making the simplest statement of all: he likes the way the 7-iron looks the most.
He says: “I have a 7-iron. I love my 7-iron. “It’s like an iron that I love to look at. It is a perfect rectangle. It just has that look to me.”
For those curious, Spieth usually hits a 7-iron anywhere from 175 to 190 yards, depending on the conditions – although in the Open Championship all the rules go out the window and he might hit a 7 from 150. As for when to hit 7 vs. 6? That depends not only on the yard of the pit but the location of the anchorage, too; if he has to stop the ball quickly he should just step on the 7 iron instead of trying to hit the 6 kid. And, again, it looks great.
READ: Here’s what Ludwig Åberg taught me in half an hour in class
6. Remember: Golf can work in reverse.
Explaining his current feeling, Spieth strikes an interesting note:
“Many times the game works the other way around,” he said. “You’ll feel right if you go left, you know? [tell them] swinging to the right. They’re like, ‘no way, it’s going to go well,’ but they compare it. “
I wonder if Spieth is giving out advice against the piece every pro-am hole he plays. He says he will wait until he is told.
He says: “I try to wait until someone asks me because I don’t really want them to give me advice unless I ask. Wait – Jordan Spieth gets advice?! “Between pro-ams and mail and everything, I promise I get all kinds of advice. I don’t see them and I don’t hear them all, but yes.”
7. Making a swing change? Check the pressure.
As Spieth juggled a complex mix of his past and present golf swings (the backswing depth of his 2017 self, the hand technique of his younger self, the practice routine of his current self, etc.) he tried to work on that new swing first in a controlled distance setting and gradually prepare it for competition.
“I’ve gone from hitting most of the shots in the video booth in the first eight weeks to scouting areas where I’m being driven in and out … and doing the work,” he said. Working means creating a composition, specific images that test pressure by ordering, three-quarter shots, different moods and shapes in different situations.
“It had to focus on the swing for a while … and although it requires a little more focus than I would like to play to the best of my ability, I can make good changes on the course, which took a while to get to that level.”
8. Find a good measuring stick.
For Spieth, that’s World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, who lives near Spieth and serves as his regular partner.
“When we play games at home, I play with Scottie a little bit at home and we play with guys from one to two to two handicaps, and the separation is not what it would be if we were playing outside. [on Tour] just because of what you say, [tucked] pin positions,” he said.
As for playing with Scottie?
“Obviously when you’re playing with Scottie, you have a pretty good gauge of who you’re compared to, right? So that helps.”
9. Forgive the past.
This comes with Spieth’s most profound answer, which I always think about. How is it, I ask, that he has set such a high standard at such a young age when compared to his size? Here is his answer in full:
“It can be very challenging at times,” he says. “Like, I wouldn’t wish for a few years in the last five, ten years for most people. You live in problem-solving mode, trying to figure out how to be, or whatever. And knowing a lot about the mechanics is even more frustrating because it’s not like everything is fine and dandy. It’s like no, you should actually—
“But at the same time, knowing that if I get the club position the way, at least the way my DNA is, the way I want it, then good things are around the corner. Golf is funny, isn’t it? I’m 32, so I can play at the highest level for another 10 years, and that’s a long time. That’s a full career of any other sport, I can’t forgive you for the past. that can help, you know, as long as I stay in that mindset, I believe that good things will come.
10. Be a goldfish.
I didn’t expect Spieth to quote Ted Lasso, but he says he relies on a mantra from the show: Be a goldfish.
The thing about goldfish is that they have 10 second memories. Their lives do not dictate their future. And they have simple, quiet minds.
Spieth, of course, is the anti-goldfish. That’s what makes him such an interesting and thoughtful golfer. Goldfish couldn’t meet golf swings in different areas of his career, looking for the best things. The goldfish will have no thought of swinging as it stands on top of the ball. Perhaps Spieth knows that he – like most of us – could use a little more goldfish.
My mind is leaving the interview? I like Jordan Spieth the way he is.
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