Gary Koch was ready to send home hundreds of fans seated in the bleachers surrounding the 18th green when Jordan Spieth all but commandeered the microphone.
The long-time NBC Sports analyst was handling the emcee duties after Spieth won the PGA Tour’s Valspar Championship outside Tampa, Florida, late last month, and the trophies and seven-figure cheques had already been handed over. Koch figured they were finished.
Then Spieth took over the proceedings yet again.
“One more thing,” Spieth said.
It might have been his lone miscalculation of the day, since he proceeded to thank the title sponsor, the volunteers, tournament officials, the fans in the gallery and just about anybody who set foot on the grounds during his second official PGA Tour victory.
Koch, an accomplished tour player in his day, was almost speechless, which is a bit unusual for a professional sports broadcaster.
“He’s just so mature, so composed,” Koch said two days later. “If he and Rory McIlroy are the future of golf, then the game is in very, very good shape.”
Spieth and McIlroy do not just represent the shape of things to come, but the shape of right now.
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All the 21-year-old Texan has done since winning in Tampa is keep his head down and his scores even lower.
Last weekend in Houston, he matched the best 72-hole score before losing in a play-off, but it nonetheless marked the fourth time in a little over four months that nobody in the field posted a lower score.
In his past 11 starts in which world-ranking points were on offer, Spieth has won three times, twice finished second and been seventh or better in all but two starts.
He enters the Masters this week rated behind only Rory McIlroy, a four-time major winner, as the man to beat.
A professional for all of 28 months, Spieth has climbed to No 4 in the world ranking.
“To be here as the second favourite, it is amazing to think of what the world of golf thinks of this player and his abilities and his future,” said Golf Channel analyst David Duval, a former world No 1.
Had Spieth won on Sunday, he would have climbed to second in the world ranking, behind only McIlroy, the 25-year-old Northern Irishman.
Still the Dallas native is riding the hottest streak of any player in years, excluding Tiger Woods and McIlroy. All anybody needs to know about Spieth’s trademark tenacity surfaced on Sunday, when he told NBC that he doesn’t like characterising his current run of form as a “streak”. That carries a negative implication, he said.
“I’ve heard people ask me, ‘Is this a run that you’re on?’,” he said. “I don’t really like that, I don’t like calling it that, because that would mean ‘normal’ is anything less than where I’m at.
“I expect myself to be playing like this. This is what I work hard for.”
Like the generally affable and embraceable McIlroy, Spieth has sent forth all the right signs that he is ready for the scrutiny that accompanies a place among the game’s elite.
Two weeks ago, when photos of his palatial new home in Texas surfaced online, he all but laughed.
“I bought the place months ago, and for whatever reason, it’s just now coming out,” he said.
“So I’m not really sure why anyone really cares. But so be it.”
Then he offered up words never uttered by Woods, to be sure.
“I understand that the better you play, the more attention is on you,” he said. “I still want to play better, so I know that if I do that, then that’s going to be the case and I accept that and really enjoy it. I kind of have fun with it.”
Spieth had a blast during his Masters debut in 2014, seizing the lead on Sunday before missing a series of short putts and finishing joint second.
In just his second trip to Augusta, nobody is overlooking him, and rightly so.
While the highly compressed Spieth was agitated that he failed to survive the three-man play-off in Houston, once he took a deep breath, he could see the big picture, writ in Augusta-tinted green lettering.
“I feel as prepared as I think I could be,” he said. “These last three weeks that I played, I felt very comfortable. I felt more and more comfortable with more and more pressure, you know, and that gives me a lot of confidence going into Augusta, where you probably have the most pressure anywhere.”
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