Can Jordan Spieth win the career Grand Slam? Hope returns at this year’s PGA Championship
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — “If I don’t win one in the next 10 years, then maybe there’s added pressure,” Jordan Spieth said here eight years ago, nodding his head as he spoke, making sure everyone realized just how much time lay ahead. It was Aug. 9, 2017, the week of the 99th PGA Championship. Spieth was 24 at the time, only a few weeks removed from a back-nine fever dream at Royal Birkdale. Arriving at Quail Hollow for the PGA Championship, he was four good rounds away from becoming the youngest player to complete the career Grand Slam. Sitting for his pre-tournament news conference, Spieth faced the kind of questions that come when history hovers.
He shrugged them all aside. Spieth figured a long career ahead might give him 20 or 30 chances to win the PGA. If he didn’t do it that week, he posited, he could do so sometime down the line. Listening back to that news conference now is further proof that the best part about being young is having no clue how fast the future comes.
“Hopefully, we don’t have to have this conversation in 10 years,” Spieth said. “But if we do, then it might be different.”
Now it’s 2025, and a father of two bearing a striking resemblance to Jordan Spieth sat for a similar pre-tournament news conference Tuesday morning. Ten years haven’t yet passed, but no one needs to wait. Everything is indeed different. Since winning the 2017 Open to join Tiger Woods as the only player with 10 PGA Tour wins before age 24, Spieth has won twice in his last 177 starts and is 0-for in his last 29 major appearances.
That PGA Championship win? That career Grand Slam? Everyone is still waiting.
Spieth, fidgeting a bit in his seat Tuesday, looked around for the first question.
“It’s funny,” he began. “I think if Rory (McIlroy) didn’t complete the Slam at the Masters (last month), then it wouldn’t have been a storyline for me here, necessarily.”
Back at Quail Hollow this week, Spieth, now 31, is surrounded by what sure seems like a lot of coincidences.
Maybe it’s a coincidence that he’s returning to the course where he had his first chance to complete the Grand Slam.
Maybe it’s a coincidence that this comes immediately following McIlroy’s completion of his own quest just four weeks ago.
Maybe it’s a coincidence that this is all happening as Spieth arrives in Charlotte with some genuine momentum, a rarity in recent years.
All of that is enough to rouse the kind of desperate hope Spieth can conjure perhaps more than any other player on tour.
Spieth’s journey since 2017 has been unsparing in its torment. Every swing tweak seemed to push him further from his former self. Every hint of a return to greatness was followed by swift falls backward. All along, he existed in some kind of space-time continuum of 2015 to 2017, with his every move compared to the days when the game bent to his whims and all onlookers fawned.
In hindsight, the guy probably needed a cold, prolonged break in recent years. It’s hard to change directions when in motion, and though looking for fixes, he never really stopped.
Isn’t it appropriate, then, that a hard reality Spieth was avoiding, or at least delaying, could end up being exactly what he needed? This past offseason, after years spent crafting and recrafting a swing shaped by soreness in his left wrist, Spieth underwent surgery to not only aid his play but also improve his quality of life. The wrist was an issue since 2017 and got significantly worse over the last two PGA Tour seasons. In recent years, he’d occasionally dislocate his wrist when picking up one of his kids.
Despite being long needed, the decision to shut things down and start anew was not an easy one. After completing the procedure in mid-August, he went 12 weeks without hitting balls and five months without competitive play, his longest period off the course since early childhood. Spieth has said he resembled a 4-to-6 handicap in the weeks leading up to his 2025 season debut at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in February. He made the cut that week and has since said he has never felt more “grateful” to be playing professional golf.
That gratitude? All that time spent focused on fixing himself and not fixing his swing? Who knows what, in the long run, may come to be unlocked? What is known is this: Spieth finished T4 in Phoenix three weeks after Pebble. And T9 at Cognizant two weeks after that. And he posted four straight top-20s from early April through early May, including a T14 finish at the Masters and a fourth-place showing at the CJ Cup.
He’s now in Charlotte talking about his game in a way that makes you damn-near believe something is possible. He views his driver as a “weapon.” A few approach shots got away from him in Philadelphia last week, but he says he’s cleaning that up. His putting is and will always be capable of sorcery. Add it all up and you don’t have to squint to see what might be possible now and down the line. Spieth used the T-word on Tuesday.
“I think I’ve been trending really well,” he said.
Spieth’s history at the PGA Championship isn’t only devoid of a win. It has been his weakest major by a healthy degree. He has two top-10 finishes in 12 career appearances. He gave Jason Day a run in 2015 at Whistling Straits in the lone edition he nearly won. A T3 finish at Bethpage in 2019 came while Brooks Koepka nearly lapped the field over four days. Spieth has finished no better than T29 in the PGA over the last five years.
He does, however, have a good feel for Quail Hollow. Spieth went 5-0-0 here during the 2022 Presidents Cup and has deep familiarity with the course from years of Wells Fargo Championship play.
“I don’t feel like I have to learn where all the pins are and where all the misses are and stuff,” Spieth said. “You can ask me the hole location on any green around this place right now, and I can tell you how I’m going to play the hole and where I’m going to try to hit it.”
There’s a chance that this is Spieth starting anew. He said Tuesday that he’s still unsure whether certain swing issues he has obsessed over were his fault or if his wrist was to blame. The beauty here is that he doesn’t know and doesn’t seem to care. The overhanging issue has been resolved, and now he’s free to play.
Maybe that’s all it’ll take to put history back on track.
(Top photo: Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)
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Brendan Quinn is a senior enterprise writer for The Athletic. He came to The Athletic in 2017 from MLive Media Group, where he covered Michigan and Michigan State basketball. Prior to that, he covered Tennessee basketball for the Knoxville News Sentinel. Follow Brendan on Twitter @BFQuinn
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· 1h 44m ago
"In recent years, he’d occasionally dislocate his wrist when picking up one of his kids" - yeah feels like he did the right thing getting that seen to...
P
· 3h 0m ago
That's got to be the dumbest question posted in a headline in the Athletic this week?
R
· 25m ago
What is it about golf that causes these decades long disappearances. I can't think of any other sport where this happens. Anyone seen Yani Tseng lately? She's still playing. That being said, my wife and I root for Spieth every time out. It would be wonderful to see him pull off the grand slam this week.
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