Jordan Spieth returns to Colonial Country Club for the 12th time in his PGA Tour career this week for the 2024 Charles Schwab Challenge. A historically comfortable spot on the calendar, Colonial will unveil a new look for Texas' native son and his peers as the golf course underwent a $25 million restoration following last year's tournament. While there may be some new features abound, Spieth is focused on finding his old game.
"It's [my] 12th start here, but really, the first start in the new Colonial era," Spieth said. "I saw the course yesterday. … I think Gil [Hanse] did a really, really good job from what I can tell playing it once. I think it's tough, I imagine it's tough for a course designer to bring a course back in time. But accommodating the modern game, making it maybe more playable for an average member 51 weeks of the year but still a championship golf course making it as or more difficult for us. I guess time will tell over the next four days, but it really seems like he's somehow done that, and that's really cool."
Spieth enters this week's tournament in the midst of an odd season, even for his standards. Across his last 10 starts, the 30-year-old has missed four cuts, been disqualified once and connected on just one top-10 finish. A couple of those weekend omissions came at tournaments usually right in his wheel house -- the Masters and the CJ Cup Byron Nelson.
The reason for the poor play is not hard to discern. Just about every part of Spieth's game has experienced a lull at some point this year -- his iron play has been dodgy, his short game was poor in the early spring and his putter has been inconsistent to say the least -- all while he has dealt with a nagging wrist injury.
Surprisingly, it has been Spieth's driver that has become his new backbone as he enters this week ranked inside the top 20 in driving distance and inside the top 40 in driving accuracy (really!) over the last six months.
"I feel good. It's nice that I'm able to be in my own bed. This tournament's always actually felt like kind of an exhale," Spieth said. "The Byron feels a little bit to me, a little bit more busy, and then you stuff in either The Players back in the day or now the PGA Championship, along with Quail Hollow, you know, it's nice to have a week off after this. I've never had a week off after, so I can kind of feel like I can use up whatever's there and then take a few days off and I'm looking to improve.
"I did a lot of good things the last couple weeks and improving on some stuff I wanted to, and I still have some parts of the game that need some work and hopefully [can] knock that out today and, into the beginning of this weekend, it gets better and better."
If Spieth is truly improving, we should see it should come to fruition at Colonial where he hasn't done much wrong over the last decade with one win, three runner-up finishes and four top10s. Among those who have played at least eight rounds on the par 70, the three-time major champion leads in terms of total strokes gained (+2.42), clipping second-place Collin Morikawa by nearly a stroke per round.
While it is entertaining to listen to his lengthy conversations with caddie Michael Greller and laugh at him hitting shots into gutters, Spieth is in need of some serious return to form. He's outside the top 50 in the FedEx Cup standings more than halfway through the season, and as such, he's in jeopardy of neither qualifying for the BMW Championship nor signature events next season. He's behind players like Matthieu Pavon, Sepp Straka and Byeong Hun An in the Official World Golf Rankings.
Spieth must start rolling in the right direction soon, and there may be no better time for him to do just that than this week at Colonial.
