Matter of time for Spieth

Golf, at any level, is a game that is always going to beat you somewhere along the line; the most perverse sporting mistress any unfortunate can ever have an involvement with.

“Competitive golf,” the great Bobby Jones so famously noted, “is played mainly on a five-anda-half-inch course… the distance between your ears.”

He caught perfectly the essence of the game legend would have was foisted on an often unwilling world by the Scots. It is a sentiment America’s Jordan Spieth would certainly subscribe to after his travails with the putter over the opening 18 holes of the US PGA at Quail Hollow.

Spieth, at 24 already the winner of three Majors, is bidding to join Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Gene Sarazen and Ben Hogan on the exalted list of career Grand Slam winners.

Jones, the quintessential amateur, recorded wins in the US and British Opens and corresponding victories in the US and British Amateur championships for what became known as the Impenetrable Quadrilateral in an age before the professional game came to dominate.

But Spieth, the British Open champion, can take heart from the fact that he has finished runner-up to Australia’s Jason Day, who lifted the Wanamaker Trophy at Whistling Straits in 2015, the year the American won both the Masters and the US Open.

Few would bet against Spieth eventually ticking the fourth important box in a PGA Championship. He is, simply, too glittering a talent not to. He also has a distinguished list of players to study.

The late Arnold Palmer never managed to win the PGA – although he did finish second three times. Greg Norman, the dominant player in the ’90s, also finished second a couple of times but only counted wins in the 1986 and 1988 British Opens as his wins in the Majors, although it must be added that he came close more than virtually any golfer.

And although Slammin’ Sam Snead ended his long career with 10 Major victories, three of them PGA titles, he never won the US Open to box the square.

There is no coherent or logical explanation why the golfing muse suddenly turns its head and the ethereal inner rhythms fade. Spieth could well regain the mastery of the tiny course Jones referred to and start to shoot the lights out at Quail Hollow.

His time will surely come.

Jon Swift