[PHOTO: Johnnie Izquierdo]
There are still mornings, Jordan Spieth admits, when he wakes up and his surgically repaired right wrist, “feels twice the size of the other”. But the three-time major champion quickly added that he is not concerned, even though problems persist almost a year after the operation.
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“The feeling wears off very quickly. [But] there’s not one day where I’ve woken up and said it feels totally normal yet,” he said. “It’s just part of the process.”
Spieth had just completed nine holes on Wednesday in Memphis during the pro-am for this week’s FedEx St Jude Championship at TPC Southwind and even with lingering issues, he feels more settled mentally than a year ago, when he finished tied for 68th at the same event and saw his most frustrating season come to an end.
Last August, Spieth was faced with uncertainty about his future before undergoing surgery on August 21 in Colorado to repair the tendon sheath that had been bothering him since May 2023. Without warning, the extensor carpi ulnaris tendon would sometimes pop out of the sheath, causing his hand to lose feeling and strength.
He didn’t return to competitive golf until the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in February, and while results have been mixed this year, he enters this week’s first leg of the FedEx Cup Playoffs with four top-10 finishes (twice as many as 2024) and a realistic chance to advance to the BMW Championship. He is 48th in the FedEx Cup standings, and the top 50 advance to next week’s event at Caves Valley Golf Club in Maryland.
“I’m super, super-happy about everything that’s happened [surgically],” Spieth, 32, told Golf Digest. “Looking back… it was hard because I would be playing and it would feel fine, but then it would dislocate randomly and it was like, Do I need to do something? Do I not? Structurally, whether it was making a difference or not, it was a reset and a chance to try to position things a little bit better and for the long-term going forward.”
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And it’s the long term that he is still focused on. Doctors told him it could take up to 12 to 13 months before the wrist is 100 percent healed. “So we are right there,” he said before offering a glimpse into his mindset.
“I’m excited for next year,” said Spieth, who has won 13 PGA Tour titles, the most recent coming in April 2022 at the RBC Heritage. “I need another offseason to really nail things in, but it’s been a good season all things considered off the last year. And I can still make it a great year this year, but it’ll take, obviously this week has to be pretty good and hopefully parlayed into another couple.”
And the long-term outlook extends to off-course, quality-of-life considerations. Spieth and his wife Annie just welcomed their third child, Sully, in mid-July.
“I like the way that I’ve just not had the off-the-course issues,” he said with a grin, having noted in the past how simple day-to-day activities sometimes could trigger a problem in his wrist. “I can just throw my kids around in the pool and live life, and that’s big. So, I am very happy with it.”
