Jordan Spieth rolls to bogey-free 63 at Charles Schwab Challenge
2 Min Read
Jordan Spieth’s three-straight birdies to end his Round 1 at Charles Schwab
FORT WORTH, Texas – Few could find fault with Jordan Spieth’s putting stroke, but the former FedExCup champion said a “somewhat significant” change was needed before this week’s Charles Schwab Challenge.
It worked. Spieth was impeccable with the putter en route to a bogey-free 63 that gave him a two-shot lead after Thursday’s morning wave at Colonial Country Club.
“I just needed to do a bit of adjustment in my stroke feel on some bad tendencies I got into,” Spieth said. “Cameron (McCormick, Spieth’s instructor) … was able to really pinpoint a way to get a stroke feel that left me just a little more comfortable over it.”
A lack of confidence was causing Spieth to leave putts about a foot short of his target. Spieth finished 30th in last week’s PGA Championship despite ranking 69th in Strokes Gained: Putting (-0.55) among the 81 players who made the cut. He’s 48th in that statistic this season.
He gained more than 4 strokes on the greens Thursday, missing just one of the 18 putts he faced from inside 20 feet. He was 3 for 3 from 5-10 feet, missed just one of the four putts he faced from 10-15 feet and made a 19-foot birdie putt on the 17th hole.
He started the day with a 12-foot birdie putt on his opening hole, the par-4 10th. He added birdies at 12 and 17 to shoot 32 on the front nine. Another birdied at No. 2 got him to 4 under before he birdied his final three holes, including a chip-in on the par-3 eighth hole.
Spieth, who recently ended a winless drought of nearly four years, is now seeking his second win in his home state in less than two months. His victory in last month’s Valero Texas Open was his first PGA TOUR win since the 2017 Open Championship. He’s ninth in this season’s FedExCup standings thanks to seven top-10s in his last 10 starts.
And now he brings his good form into Colonial, one of the courses where he feels most comfortable. He won here in 2016, one of six top-10s in eight starts.
“Colonial, it's Hogan's Alley,” he said. “Fit it into tight windows, trying to hit fairways, and control the ball on the green. I've putted these greens historically very well, that's No. 1. I've had a knack for reading and dialing in the speed out here.”
The familiar bentgrass putting surfaces of Colonial Country Club can seemingly fix anything that may ail Spieth’s putting stroke. He showed it Thursday.
Sean Martin manages PGATOUR.COM’s staff of writers as the Lead, Editorial. He covered all levels of competitive golf at Golfweek Magazine for seven years, including tournaments on four continents, before coming to the PGA TOUR in 2013. Follow Sean Martin on Twitter.