You might recall that Jordan Spieth got the stuffing knocked out of him at Pebble Beach last weekend.
It was sort of the same old, same old in a way — he was hitting drives like a wayward 14-handicapper. We’re talking wild, as in devil-ball wild.
Jordy was in contention at the AT&T after two days, which made the AT&T folks pretty giddy as Spieth is their main guy, their PGA Tour spokesman, they like to call them “brand ambassadors” these days.
Sadly, once Spieth stepped foot on stately Pebble, his driver decided to misbehave in a big way and the results were rounds of 74-75. That was a wooden spike deep in the heart of Texas and its favorite son — Jordy.
On Wednesday as rain fell on Riviera, pretty much making for Pro-Am misery, Spieth spent nearly two hours wacking balls in the precipitation with swing coach Cameron McCormick on hand to try and solve the Da Vinci Code that has become Spieth’s golf game, especially his driver and to a less degree, his putting.
Something may have clicked.
They got another inch of rain overnight — who says it never rains in Southern California?
More rain on Thursday morning, transformed Riviera into something like a foggy raining morning in London. A few early groups got in two or three holes then the PGA Tour officials brought ’em in and decided that those holes wouldn’t count, they would start over if the rain ever stopped.
After seven hours of boredom, they finally got the Genesis Open going and Jordan Spieth was lucky enough to be out with a pretty good group — Lefty (Phil Mickelson) and X-man (Xander Schauffele). They started on 10, Spieth birdied the par five 11th, as most were then he pitched in from off the green at the difficult 12th and added another at the par five 17th.
The first hole is almost like a gimme birdie, if you don’t birdie there, you’re probably losing a shot to the contenders and Spieth birdied there. He pitched in again for another no-putt birdie at the second which brought back memories of the 2015 Jordan Spieth — remember him? So when it finally got too dark to continue, there was Jordy, a whopping five-under par through 12 holes, sitting atop the scoreboard with Sung Kang, who made it through 14 holes.
Good news is Spieth was finding fairways. His short game came out of hiding and maybe that water-logged Wednesday practice session with McCormick did some good. For the record, Spieth was doing a lot of driver drills. And goodness knows he needed them. This guy was struggling so badly with the big stick that he was making Phil Mickelson look like Mr. Accuracy.
So that was the noticeable news out of a rainy Thursday.
There was a lot of other stuff flying around L.A. earlier in the week.
Adam Scott had everyone thinking that he should have his head examined when he basically volunteered to be penalized for slow play in attempt to get the PGA Tour to admit that slow play is indeed a plague out there. Scott also threw out that leaving the pin in really helps guys make putts. We’ll believe that as soon as Scott starts making a bunch and wins again.
Sergio Garcia kept apologizing for his childish behavior in Saudi Arabia where he basically turned into a human back-hoe on the greens. He mentioned something about personal problems but didn’t identify them.
Tiger Woods, who didn’t get to play on Thursday, said he’ll play at the WGC-Mexico but that he wouldn’t drink the water down there.
And finally, there was Matt The Caddie Grinch Kuchar, who stills swears up and down that $5,000 was a great payday for David Ortiz, his caddie at the Mayakoba Classic. Forget that Kuch banked nearly $1.3 million, there was no need to do the right thing and help make “El Tucan’s” life any better than it is.
Yeah, it was a gloomy day in L.A. but at least Spieth found a ray of hope.
And hopefully he’ll have a better weekend than he did at Pebble.
