Jordan Spieth Slam chances dwindle at PGA Championship
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Flirted with low round, but will likely be too far back after 68
KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. – Jordan Spieth, who was going for the career Grand Slam at the 103th PGA Championship at Kiawah, shot a third-round 68 to get to even par for the tournament.
He rued several missed chances and will likely be too far back to contend for the victory, which would have given him all four men’s major titles – a distinction held by only Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Ben Hogan and Gene Sarazen.
“You know, I chipped in and made a long par putt on 15, so I can't really say that it should have been a lot lower,” Spieth said after hitting just nine greens but getting up and down for par eight times. “But this is a round where I'm walking up the 18th going, man, this could have been special today. I had four or five really with no pace on it lip out today. Obviously had a couple go in.
“But it felt like one of those really good 6-, 7-under rounds that ended up being 4,” he added.
Spieth’s victory at the Valero Texas Open in early April, his first win since 2017, capped off this year’s best comeback story. He was coming off a T9 at the AT&T Byron Nelson last week.
Although expectations were high for Kiawah – he came in ranked 26th in the world, eighth in the FedExCup – the 2015 Player of the Year got behind early with rounds of 73-75 and barely made the cut. He failed to birdie either of the front-nine par 5s Saturday, but made over 100 feet of putts. His only bogey came at the notorious par-3 17th hole, where he missed left of the left bunkers and couldn’t get up and down.
At even par for the tournament, he was five behind 54-hole leaders Phil Mickelson and Louis Oosthuizen and assuming he would be as many as seven behind by the end of the day.
“Very pleased with climbing back to even,” he said. “I hate being over par at a golf course. I mean, it's like my biggest pet peeve regardless of when it is in the tournament, and I just hate seeing an over-par score next to my name. So it's nice to be tied with the course with a chance to beat it tomorrow.”
As for beating all the other players, he sounded resigned to having to wait another year.
“Yeah, if I were at 4-under and the lead was only 7, then things could be different,” he said. “But I'm not.”
Cameron Morfit began covering the PGA TOUR with Sports Illustrated in 1997, and after a long stretch at Golf Magazine and golf.com joined PGATOUR.COM as a Staff Writer in 2016. Follow Cameron Morfit on Twitter.