ROME — Passionate, highly competitive and, lord knows, mouthy, Jordan Spieth admits he’s probably the sports fan you think he is. Yes, he’s from Dallas, but he was most likely to scream at opposing players when his idol, Tom Brady, was still playing for the Patriots.
“I’ve shouted plenty of things at sporting events at people that I have no reason to do, so I also try to say, ‘pot and kettle,’ and recognize that it’s all just sport and move on,” Spieth said with a self-effacing grin on Tuesday at the Ryder Cup.
The subject in his press conference was how he might handle the razzing he and his teammates likely will receive from a pro-Europe crowd at Marco Simone Country Club in the Italian countryside, where the U.S. team will try to secure the Cup on foreign soil for the first time in three decades. In men’s pro golf, the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup can be counted as the only occasions in which hordes of fans are openly rooting against you.
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A four-time Ryder Cupper, Spieth has twice played and lost away from home—in 2014 in Scotland and 2018 in France—and understands better than anyone that ignoring the crowd, and maybe playing up to the fans, can have a big role in the outcome.
“I try and just throw it out of my head and just stick to what I’m doing because I think blocking out the noise is the healthiest thing to do,” he said. “I played a lot of matches with Patrick Reed—when he felt insulted, he turned the notch up. When I feel insulted, I don’t turn it up or down. I’m just like, ‘OK, they are drunk, move on.’”
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
