Jordan Spieth responds after Rory McIlroy comment as he looks to emulate rival
It took 25 years for golf’s most exclusive club to admit a new member after Rory McIlroy completed the career grand slam by winning the Masters. Just five weeks later, that club could expand from six to seven as Jordan Spieth bids to end his own major drought by winning the US PGA Championship at Quail Hollow.
It will be Spieth’s ninth attempt to complete the career grand slam since he claimed the third leg in the 2017 Open Championship at Royal Birkdale and the former world number one will be hopeful of mounting a realistic challenge for the first time. Although the record books show that Spieth was third at Bethpage in 2019, he finished six shots behind winner Brooks Koepka and was only that close thanks to five bogeys in the last eight holes from his Ryder Cup team-mate.
It is also three years since Spieth’s last victory on the PGA Tour at the RBC Heritage, but he has recorded four straight top-20 finishes and closed with a bogey-free 62 in the CJ Cup Byron Nelson, his lowest round for four years.
Unfortunately for Spieth, and the rest of the US PGA field, that still left him 12 shots behind runaway winner Scottie Scheffler as the world number one recorded his first win of the season in record-equalling fashion.
Scheffler, who missed the start of the season following surgery on a hand injury suffered while preparing dinner on Christmas Day, led from start to finish at TPC Craig Ranch and shot 31 under par for an eight-shot win, his aggregate of 253 matching the PGA Tour record.
