Jordan Spieth seeks to rekindle youthful magic at John Deere Classic

A smile and gracious demeanor mostly cover the inevitable scar tissue accrued across a decade of chasing a dimpled white ball at golf’s highest level.

The 11 years since Jordan Spieth exploded out of an 18th-hole bunker at TPC Deere Run in celebration of the improbable hole-out that launched a 19-year-old phenom to superstardom certainly could feel like a lifetime to the now 30-year-old father of two.

Yet, a return this week to the John Deere Classic provides an opportunity to turn back the clock. It’s where Spieth prevailed in a playoff to become the TOUR’s first teenaged winner in 81 years after that 72nd-hole magic, and where he won again while on the cusp of potential golf history in 2015.

Oh, to be young again?

Yes. And, of course, no.

“I feel in some ways the same, but in a lot of ways decently far removed given most of my life is off the golf course and it’s quite a bit different,” said Spieth, who will take the tee at 7:29 a.m. CT on Thursday for his first competitive TPC Deere Run round since his 2015 win. “I think I try to be that kid. I try to think about being that kid every time I tee it up.”

Certainly, Spieth’s return as a 13-time TOUR winner with three majors and multiple turns at world No. 1 has put a spring in the step of an event that last year collected the TOUR’s Most Engaged Community Award for the eighth time since 2008.

“In the 24 hours after he committed two weeks ago, ticket sales went gangbusters,” tournament director Andrew Lehman said. “To have him back after nine years, there’s a buzz around the grounds. There’s a buzz in the community.”

Spieth felt the buzz during his pro-am trip around the back nine Wednesday morning.

“I was pretty excited about the idea that I would be coming back the Deere this year, but now that we’re here, it’s crazy,” he said. “It really does feel like a second home. It's been really, really cool, the reception I received. I don’t have support like this anywhere outside of (his hometown) of Dallas-Forth Worth. So hopefully that continues this week and I can pick up where I left off.”

Where he left off in 2015 was downright epic. As he did in 2013, when he birdied five of his last six holes before prevailing in a four-hole playoff over native Iowan Zach Johnson and David Hearn, Spieth charged across the TPC Deere Run backside with four birdies over the last six, then bested Tom Gillis in sudden death. He then boarded the Deere charter to St. Andrews with a chance to join Ben Hogan as the only man to win the first three legs of the modern Grand Slam.

It was a moment in the world golf spotlight that a 2021 book detailing the history of the John Deere Classic described as karmic payback for Ed Fiori overtaking Tiger Woods in the Quad Cities in 1996.

At St. Andrews, of course, Spieth finished an agonizing shot out of a playoff, but he said he’s never wondered if playing in Illinois the previous week derailed his chances of joining Hogan. Nor has it been a factor in his nine-year absence from Deere Run.

“I had plenty of chances,” he said of that Open. “I was in control of the tournament with two holes to go at St. Andrews and just needed to go par-par for a playoff or par-birdie to win. I had no regrets by the end of that week.”

Neither, of course, does he regret the forward spin of the clock. Fun though it may be to remember the kid he was in 2013, marriage, fatherhood and his standing in the game are the rewards of age – and also lend perspective he can use to his advantage on the golf course.

“I think on one side it hasn't changed my drive,” he said. “I think it's changed kind of what is my drive. I accomplished most of the actual written goals I wrote down by the time I was 22 years old. I think now getting perspective on what drives me and what do I really want to accomplish in the game, that's changed.

“Having kids and recognizing that where golf was life, I don’t think it was necessarily a very healthy thing. I would like to be a lot of other things, and what I do is play golf versus it was all-encompassing. So that frees your mind up a little bit, maybe takes a little bit of pressure off on the bad weeks.”

Still, rekindling the magic he has enjoyed in the past at TPC Deere Run will be a welcome result this week as Spieth writes his next chapter.

“The drive to be as close to or at my ceiling in every level is just as high, with or without kids,” he said. “It's just finding the right balance to be able to get enough work in to be able to keep inching that way while living life on the side.”