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Jordan Spieth is looking like Jordan Spieth again.
Well, except for the time when the Horrible Horseshoe rang his bell.
The three-time major winner, who is trying to shake a three-year funk that has dropped him to No. 56 in the world rankings, was making the game look easy Friday in the second round of the Charles Schwab Challenge in Fort Worth, Texas.
Gleefully touring one of his favorite courses, Colonial Country Club, Spieth was posting red numbers with seeming ease. Starting on the 10th, he made a half-dozen birdies through 11 holes to get to 11 under, two shots clear of the field and in prime position to end a winless stretch going back to his victory in the 2017 British Open.
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All the work he did with his coach, Cameron McCormick, during the pandemic-induced pause on the PGA Tour looked to be taking hold as he split the tight fairways, attacked the small greens with superb iron play and turned to his magical ways on the greens with putter in hand.
Then he got to the third hole, the start of a three-hole stretch of struggle nicknamed the Horrible Horseshoe. All started fine as he found another fairway on the par 4 and knocked his approach to 30 feet. Twelve under and a three-shot lead was definitely in play.
Then Spieth got all sorts of out of sorts.
His first putt ran 3 feet by. His second putt ran 3 feet by. His third putt ran 3 feet by. His fourth putt finally found the bottom of the cup.
A four-jack from one of the best putters in the world is not something you see every day, and it certainly shook up the kid from Dallas.
Visibly dazed, Spieth followed his double-bogey six by missing the green on the par-3 fourth and made bogey. In less than 25 minutes, Spieth dropped three shots to par and dropped out of the lead.
“I did a really good job of staying very neutral where I’d been kind of getting really negative or down on myself for a little while in the past now. I felt that I gave myself some grace to say, look, I haven’t really been practicing a ton of those kind of short-range putts,” Spieth said. “Those are ones where you just have a ton of them when you’re playing in competition but you’re picking them up a lot of times when you’re playing regular rounds of golf at home.”
Spieth got back to being Spieth with birdies on the next two holes – including the tough, 472-yard par-4 fifth – and finished with a second consecutive 5-under 65 to stand at 10 under and one shot out of the lead set by Harold Varner III.
World No. 1 Rory McIlroy shot 63 to move to 9 under along with No. 12 Xander Schauffele and Collin Morikawa, who has yet to miss a cut in 21 starts since turning pro last year.
“There wasn’t a huge swing of emotions,” Spieth said. “I stayed calm. I was just trying to hit each shot where it needed to go to make the best score on that hole, and five was huge. Five was really big, to feel like I kind of salvaged the Horrible Horseshoe and came out of it with actually some momentum.”
Spieth always has the mojo going at Colonial, where he won in 2016 and finished runner-up in 2015 and 2017. His career average is a blistering 67.79. So it’s the ideal place for Spieth to turn 2020 around, which so far has included just one finish in the top 50 in six starts.
“When I got done yesterday, I thought I could just minorly improve in a couple areas of the game, stuff I’m working on, trying to trust it a little bit more with different shots and especially off the tee with the long clubs, and certainly it was improved today,” Spieth said. “I played a really, really solid round of golf with a kind of 20-minute hiccup for a couple holes, and with eight birdies around this place, it’s nothing to complain about.
“To me it’s about feels. I’m looking for the feels, and I was giving myself grace on the outcome, and as long as I stay focused on doing that this weekend, that keeps me progressing forward.”
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