Jordan Spieth has been playing golf for a month without pain and plans to return from wrist surgery at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, ending his longest stretch without competition and looking at his time off as a chance to reset.
“I had some really bad habits for a long time,” Spieth said in a telephone interview Friday. "Whether it was something that would have happened anyway or whether anything in my wrist was causing me to not be able to get into certain positions, I don't have that issue now.
“Having to take three months off swinging forces you to come back and be wet concrete."
He first injured his wrist in May 2023 when the extensor carpi ulnaris tendon (ECU) would pop out of the sheath. It reached a point where he decided to have surgery Aug. 21 in Colorado to rebuild the sheath.
Spieth said he went nearly 12 weeks before he could hit balls, and then another month before he played his first round.
“I’m not calling this swing changes,” he said. “These are just a reset into some of the stuff I did that was my DNA, that was super advantageous that I had gotten away from for one reason or another.”
Spieth spoke on his way to practice at Trinity Forest in Dallas — “First time I've hit to a range covered in snow,” he said — before going to the Cotton Bowl for the Texas-Ohio State college football semifinal game.
Still to come is shots from gnarly spots in the rough or an awkward lie in a bunker. But he said he was relieved when he no longer felt pain from having the club in certain positions or when the club made impact with the turf.
"One day I hit a shot that should have hurt and it didn't,” he said.
He contemplated playing next week in the California desert. Instead, his return — a little more than five months since his last competition — will be at Pebble Beach. It coincides with AT&T's 40th year as title sponsor, currently the longest-running sponsorship among tournaments. Spieth has had a corporate relationship with AT&T since 2014.
Now it’s a question of getting back among the elite in golf.
Spieth chased the calendar Grand Slam in 2015, when he reached No. 1 in the world, and had three majors before turning 24. He first noticed something going on his wrist in 2018, and he has missed the Tour Championship four times in the last seven years.
“I think I'm trying to look big picture,” he said. “I don't want to put too much pressure on a hot start. I just want to get back into a rhythm. This is by far the longest I've gone between tournament rounds.”
His plan is to go three straight weeks — that equates to about 18 rounds — and take stock of how his wrist feels before resuming a normal schedule leading up to the Masters.
He is No. 70 in the world, having dropped from No. 43 when he had surgery, and failed to advance out of the first round of the PGA Tour postseason. That means he will need sponsor exemptions for the signature events, which is not likely to be an issue given his star power.
Spieth first rose to fame in 2013 at age 20 when he went from not having a PGA Tour card to playing in the Presidents Cup in a six-month span. Even last year, when he was in the mix only once, he still managed to finish at No. 5 in the Player Impact Program.
Now he starts his 13th season — “I like it better to say I'm 31,” Spieth said — and has seen enough to realize the depth on the PGA Tour is stronger than ever and it's rarer now to see great success after golfers turn 40.
Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Henrik Stenson are the only players 40 or older to have won a major over the last 10 years.
His immediate goals are the PGA Championship to complete the career Grand Slam and The Players Championship. “I feel like you've conquered golf if you've won all five,” he said.
But his return — this reset that he mentions — is about getting back to a high level of play.
“I think the biggest goals for me, I want to feel like I step on the tee and I know I'm one of the best golfers in the world — I have no doubts about that when I step on the tee," he said. "I want things to be in place where I feel consistent enough to believe that day in and day out. It has to do with being on runs where you're finishing in the top 10, top 15 every week.
“I know that feeling,” he said. “That's the feeling I want to get back to.”
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