Jordan Spieth's thoughts on his Career Grand Slam attempts are fascinating
Golf and the world that we live in with it can be very prisoner of the moment-y.
To be clear this is fine and normal. With golf being a sport where individuals win, when one single person has the entirety of our focus then we have a tendency to live fully in that idea.
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We are at a point now, as a result of this phenomenon, where the Career Grand Slam is at the forefront of our minds like never before. When Tiger Woods climbed the mountain back in 2000 we did not have the internet the way we do now or social media or television coverage discussing the idea around the clock. Times have changed and Rory McIlroy joining the club a month ago has made us all extremely hyper-aware of Club CGS.
This sequence of events has brightened the lights on Jordan Spieth's career trophy case and more specifically than anything the absence of a Wanamaker Trophy in it. We were just hand-delivered a CGS... why can't Jordan give us another? It only seems fair, golf!
While McIlroy had been chasing the CGS since 2011, Jordan has only been doing so since 2017 when he won his Open Championship. From a tally standpoint that marks eight different PGA Championships that he has fallen short. Unfortunately... he has mostly fallen very short.
Jordan Spieth PGA Championship Finishes Since Attempting CGS (event winner)
2017............... T28 (Justin Thomas)
2018............... T12 (Brooks Koepka)
2019................ T3 (Brooks Koepka)
2020............... T71 (Collin Morikawa)
2021................ T30 (Phil Mickelson)
2022................ T34 (Justin Thomas)
2023................ T29 (Brooks Koepka)
2024................. T43 (Xander Schauffele)
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An often-made quip these days used to be that Tiger Woods (2019 Masters) and Phil Mickelson (2021 PGA Championship) had won majors more recently than McIlroy and Spieth, but the former taking care of business at Augusta himself and establishing his CGS in the process has isolated the latter in that regard.
But is it not strange how we as a golf world haven't talked about Jordan's CGS quest the same way we did Rory's? Perhaps some of that is that a green jacket is what eluded Rory and there is a certain aura that comes with that which doesn't, all due respect, with the PGA or any other major for that matter. Annually though, Rory has dealt with that question in bold and capital letters where Jordan has kind of floated by. Perhaps that is also representative of the fact that Rory has maintained top form as a player and Jordan has not.
To his credit, Jordan seems aware of whatever we want to call this. Speaking on Tuesday at Quail Hollow he noted that he has not exactly come close to his own CGS since having an opportunity to get there.
Coming to grips with the fact that no one has really asked about it is maybe the most telling thing here. Scroll back up and look at the list of PGA Championship winners since Jordan has had a chance to reach immortality. Consider that Justin Thomas has won the event twice, including the last time it was at Quail Hollow. Recall that all of Brooks Koepka's major championships (five of them, two more than Jordan) have happened in this period. Collin Morikawa and Xander Schauffele have each won the event and added an Open Championship as well in the time.
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When Jordan Spieth hoisted the Claret Jug in 2017 a CGS felt inevitable for him. Maybe it still is.
Right now though... he knows that people are going to be asking about it in an entirely different way until that inevitability does or does not happen.
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It was just a cool thing for me to do,' Clanton says. As we've seen with Scheffler, that compartmentalization can be an edge. Clanton's teammates tease him about how his confidence spills out from time to time. It's something he's working on. So, less than five days away from his first start as a professional, here's a curveball: How does your mental game stack up against the best in the world? Clanton pauses. He laughs, nervously. 'This is the type of question that you can answer truthfully, and then you can come off very brash and very cocky. Or you can say the nice answer,' he says. 'That's definitely one of the strongest parts of my game. I can handle bigger moments, which I'm very glad about, because I've been put in those moments these last couple of months. Obviously I've failed in the past, and I will fail in the future, but it's how many times you don't fail that matters. 'It's very weird, just because you sometimes meet some people, or people on the internet, and they'll think you're cocky. But if you're not confident in yourself, then you will never make it in any career. I think that's truthful.' In golf, it never hurts to be feeling yourself a little. Clanton knows this. Sometimes that can come back to bite you, though. Clanton made one goal of his extremely public over the past 10 months: He wanted to win the national championship with Florida State. They didn't make it to the match play finals. Other times, though, that swagger — that unwavering inner fire — is exactly what you need. Making it comes with change. Big change. Clanton's NIL earnings helped Rhonda take her last flight after a 40-year career at Delta. She'll serve as her son's manager on the road going forward. David sold the majority of his company, so he can attend more tournaments than ever. Walters and his agency scooped Clanton up pre-college, and stuck with him through it all. Wiertel has never been a professional caddie, but he's retiring from his teaching job and moving his family from Illinois to Florida to loop for Clanton full time. The caddie's 11-year-old daughter, Lucy, is the reason Clanton and Wiertel linked up — she struck up a conversation with Clanton on the range at Pinehurst No. 2, before the North and South amateur. Clanton needed a caddie, offered the job to Wiertel, and the pair went on to win the tournament. Now he cannot imagine anyone else on his bag. Advertisement 'You cannot do it on your own. It's just impossible,' Clanton says. 'The amount of struggles you're going to go through. I can name 40 different times where I did not want to play golf again. You're going to go through times like that, and the people that you can lean on and be there with, that's the people that'll help you make it.' Making it also comes with expectations, ones that Clanton is still working on processing. 'I was so hard on myself after we lost (NCAAs) that I just couldn't get my head wrapped around it. Then I have everyone else texting me to play well next week, we're so excited for you to start your career. It's amazing, but it's also hard,' Clanton says. 'I just ended my career with FSU, which was the best three years of my life, and now I'm pursuing what I've always wanted to pursue.' To properly chase those PGA Tour dreams, Clanton's time is going to be more precious than ever. His playing schedule is madness, sponsors want a piece of him, and he knows he needs to prioritize his game over it all. Aside from playing in his first professional event this week in a featured group with Rory McIlroy and Åberg, Clanton's biggest concern right now is where he'll live. When his college apartment lease is up at the end of the summer, he has two choices among Florida pro golfer meccas: Jacksonville or Jupiter. Clanton likes to say he had a rookie year before his rookie year, and if that taught him anything, it's to keep things light. Mindlessly scroll on social media after a long day. Get the In-N-Out meal when he's craving it. Bring the Xbox on the road. Be a kid. As Clanton tees off at TPC Toronto, the uncertainty of pro golf lies ahead. He didn't qualify for the U.S. Open on Monday, and he's not sure about the Open Championship either. He's played in more than a dozen PGA Tour events but never with a check on the line. But Clanton figured out how to get his foot in the door, with the same tenacity honed on plastic greens and tested through failure. He made it. Now he's in a fight to stay. (Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Photos: Mike Mulholland, Ben Jared / PGA Tour, Joe Scarnici / Getty Images; additional photos courtesy of the Clanton family)
