Welcome to our new award category:
PGA Tour Entertainer Of The Year.
And without further ado, we present the winner for 2017:
Mr. Jordan Spieth of Dallas, Texas.
The voting is in and it wasn’t really close at all.
Spieth in a runaway.
Summer is prime time for golf and Spieth wasted no time giving us perhaps the most memorable shot of the entire season.
After losing his lead on the back nine on Sunday, he found himself tied with Daniel Berger at The Travelers on that 25th day in June.
Spieth didn’t have his “A” game or it wouldn’t have ended in a playoff but what followed was simply amazing.
Spieth’s errant drive hit a tree and bounced back into the fairway but he found himself 230 yards from the hole. Berger’s drive wasn’t that great either but he had an obvious advantage.
“I got lucky off the tee,” Spieth recalled. “Left it in a good position where I could get it up-and-down — that was the goal, get it up-and-down.” That “good position” was a greenside bunker, short of the hole, about 60-70 feet. Meanwhile, Berger’s second was 50 feet short of the hole, but he was putting.
What Spieth did next was beyond memorable.
He caught the bunker shot perfect and it started making its way to the hole and went in for an improbable birdie.
The roar from the assembled crowd at 18 was deafening.
Caddie Michael Greller threw the bunker rake into the air, Spieth tossed his sand wedge into the air and the two then ran to each other and gave an incredible aerial body-bump that may have been one of the best images of the season. “I went kind blank. I’ve never caused or experienced a roar like that,” Spieth said after the victory.
Berger, disheartened, nonetheless gave his putt to tie an incredible effort and barely missed.
Afterward, Berger gave this gem:
“It’s just Jordan doing Jordan things.”
As if that drama wasn’t enough, the Open Championship would become an all-timer.
It was at Royal Birkdale where Spieth played well enough to take a three-shot lead over Matt Kuchar into Sunday’s finale.
Spieth went out in 37, Kuchar 34 and it was totally game-on in the season’s third major.
At the long par four 13th, it looked like a Spieth collapse was in the works and perhaps, Kuchar might be on his way to his first major championship.
Spieth hit one of the wildest tee shots in major history by a leader. It went 60 yards right and ended in a miserable, unplayable lie on the side of a large dune.
Then came an agonizing 29 minutes the golf world will never forget.
Spieth seemingly weighed every option in the book, kept his cool and made his way to the driving range, which wasn’t out-of-bounds. With the best-known officials in golf keeping an eye on him, Spieth then asked for and got relief from a row of equipment trucks. Finally he hit his third shot after the unplayable lie penalty. It would finish just short of the green. He made a marvelous save for bogey.
Kuchar had the lead in a major with five holes to play.
Then, as Berger said a month before — Jordan started doing Jordan things.
Spieth hit a laser tee shot at the par three 14th and made birdie. Then at the par five 15th the big blow would come.
Spieth hit two good shots and stood over a 50-footer for eagle. Of course he drained it and gave Michael Greller the famous order:
“Go get that!” as Spieth pointed to his ball in the hole.
Another bomb for birdie at 16, birdie at the par five 17th and Spieth would finish with 69 to win by three as he hoisted the Claret Jug.
Poor old Kooch never knew what hit him.
It was just Jordan being Jordan.
And that ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, is why Jordan Spieth is the DogLegNews, PGA Tour Entertainer Of The Year.
