It took him a while but late down the stretch on Sunday at the John Deere Classic, Jordan Spieth ducked into a phone booth and emerged as Superman.
Once again, Spieth amazed the golf world, once again he won and this time he did it by looking very human early and very superhuman late in the day.
Spieth won the John Deere Classic in a two-hole playoff with consummate journeyman Tom Gillis, a guy old enough to be his father. Spieth won the tournament when it absolutely looked like he wouldn’t.
The Masters and U.S. Open champion played miserably at the start, he took bogey right out of the box, righted the ship with a birdie at the second then suffered another bogey at three. He birdied six to get back to even par but even par gets you run over by a John Deere tractor in this event. He was falling behind, quickly.
Things turned more dismal when a bogey at the 11th hole put him one-over par for the day and four shots behind the leaders, including Gillis, the long shot.
At the 13th, Superman showed up and birdied four of the next five to tie Gillis at 20-under. A closing par at 18 forced the playoff.
Both made pars the first go-round at 18 but then it ended suddenly after Gillis hit a wayward tee shot into the deep rough on the right. His second didn’t fade and it skipped across the fairway and into the water on the left.
That opened the door for Spieth’s fourth victory of the season and he made it look easy. A 7-iron to the middle of the green and two putts sent him packing for the Open Championship with a boat-load of momentum.
“It feels good, it means a lot to win here,” said Spieth, who turned down playing in the Scottish Open to compete at the TPC Deere Run. “It was a fun day, not the way it started but a good outcome.”
The day wasn’t a total loss for Gillis either. It was his best finish ever in 171 PGA Tour events and the runnerup spot earned him a berth in the Open Championship at St. Andrews.
Danny Lee and Zach Johnson tied for third at 19-under and Lee will keep asking himself “what if?” On the fourth hole, Lee suffered a “brain-fart” of sorts and flashed back to lift-clean-and-place rules. He marked his ball and picked it up. One shot penalty. The margin by which he missed getting into the playoff.
