The video began to resurface a couple of years ago when Scottie Scheffler was a two-time Masters champion entrenched at No. 1 in the world and Jordan Spieth was sliding out of the top 50 and headed for surgery on his left wrist.
Dallas television station WFAA posted a clip from the Byron Nelson Junior Championship in 2009. Scheffler was 13 and wearing pants, of course, in the heat of a Texas summer. Spieth was about to turn 16, the star attraction
who shot 62 to win by 11 shots.
Fast forward 17 years and both are one leg away from the career Grand Slam.
Spieth gets his 10th crack at golf's most elusive club when the PGA Championship starts Thursday at Aronimink. Scheffler seems much closer to it, even though his first chance at winning all four majors is still a month away in the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills.
“He's three years older than me," Scheffler said. "When I was growing up, he was always the best junior. When I got the chance to compete against him, I would watch and see what he did well. He was a great junior player. He was always a step ahead of me and a little bit better for the most part.”
The roles are reversed now. Scheffler passed him for good in the world ranking at the end of 2021 and the gap now is more like a chasm.
The last of Spieth's 16 worldwide wins was four years ago in the RBC Heritage. Scheffler has won 19 times since then, including an Olympic gold medal in Paris and twice at the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas. He has been PGA Tour player of the year the last four seasons. Tiger Woods is the only player to win the award more consecutive times.
Spieth says he occasionally will be jealous of others' success, but not when it comes to Scheffler.
“It's like, man, I want to pay attention to what he's doing and figure out how to do it,” Spieth said. "A lot of times when guys are doing better, I think at my best I can do what they've done. Obviously I've never driven the ball like Rory (McIlroy). But with Scottie, I feel like at my best I can hit any shot. I don't think I've ever gotten to his level of iron play — not that anybody has.
“But I've started to ask more questions,” Spieth said. “I didn't ask questions for a long time. But I'm interested in learning from him.”
They compete regularly, just rarely on a golf course with ropes, scoreboards or world ranking points. Scheffler, Spieth and Si Woo Kim are part of a regular game that can include former NHL player Brenden Morrow and NFL quarterback Tony Romo, retired tour pros and club champions.
There's typically a five-man game of “Wolf,” along with head-to-head matches among the pros. Spieth and Scheffler play $100 a hole, no presses.
Scheffler would appear to be No. 1 in those money games, too.
“He calls me ATM,” Kim said.
There's plenty of banter, and Scheffler was asked who was better at giving the needle.
“Ask Jordan. That's my answer — ask him,” Scheffler said with a smile. “I think I'm keeping him up at night right now.”
Spieth said as much when he looked ahead to the PGA Championship, his next opportunity to become the seventh player to win the career Grand Slam. He would love to get there first, even if recent form would indicate the odds favor Scheffler.
“You ought to think a U.S. Open fits his game really well. I think he’s going to get there really soon,” Spieth said. “It would be fun to get there first. Because he needles, and it would be fun to get the needle back. When we play our games, I used to have needles back. I don’t have them anymore.”
Spieth does not feel as far off as the results would indicate. He had good finishes without having a real chance at winning a few times last year during his return from wrist surgery. He's had three finishes in the top 12 this year, all of them marked by bad finishes or a few bad shots that invariably bounce into trouble instead of into the fairway.
Spieth feels a small measure of momentum in the big picture. It's round-by-round that he seems to lose whatever gains he is making.
He twice had double bogeys to end rounds at The Players Championship. He played his three closing holes at the Valspar Championship in 6-over par. At the RBC Heritage, a tee shot bounced off a spectator's shoulder toward a cart path and rolled 2 inches out-of-bounds.
It's something every week.
“A couple of bad swings at the wrong time have prevented me from teeing off Sunday and feeling like I had a chance,” he said.
Spieth was runner-up in the PGA Championship at Whistling Straits in 2015, the year he was three shots away from a chance at all four majors. But he hasn't had much success in the only major he's missing since winning the 2017 British Open. His lone top 10 was in 2019 at Bethpage Black, where he went into the final round nine shots behind Brooks Koepka.
Any major is difficult. Even harder is when it's the only one missing for a career slam. McIlroy went through that for 11 years until finally winning the Masters.
"You know that you’re not just trying to win another tournament, you’re trying to become part of history, and that has a certain weight to it,” McIlroy said.
Easing some of that pressure are results that suggest Spieth isn't one of the big favorites. He's not likely to have as many eyes on him as McIlroy had every year at Augusta National, and as Scheffler is sure to have at Shinnecock Hills next month.
For Spieth, his biggest challenge is being patient. He compares it with going through a bad run of cards at blackjack, knowing a good hand is around the corner. It's a matter of which corner.
“It feels like we have a bad shoe at the blackjack table,” he said. “You have to keep playing until it turns around. It's like I'm playing the right way. It's been a weird run of cards.”
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AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf
