HONOLULU – “Hey dude.”
That was Jordan Spieth’s greeting to his young son Sammy.
After a quick kiss from Spieth’s wife, Annie, Spieth plucked his young son, not yet a year old, from his mother’s arms and carried him to the scoring trailer to complete the carnage of a 5-under 75 in the second round.
It was 11 shots worse than Spieth’s first-round 65 as he shared the lead with Chris Kirk and rookie Taylor Montgomery. Sammy Spieth, and to some extent his father, were a bit indifferent to the proceedings.
“Just a bad day. I didn’t feel like it was much different, I just felt like I was on a really bad deck today,” Spieth said after handing his son back to his mother. “I took some bad tee shots. But otherwise I didn’t play all that different and ended up just a foot in the rough here right behind the tree. It was a special, special day.”
As good as Spieth’s machine was on Thursday, it was as bad on Friday.
The statistical differences are staggering:
Strokes taken from the tee:
Thursday: 1,211 (15th)
Friday: -1.296 (126Thursday)
Moves Gained:
Thursday: .526 (56thThursday)
Friday: -1.369 (116Thursday)
Strokes taken around the green:
Thursday: .234 (59thThursday)
Friday: -1.758 (139Thursday)
Putting Strokes Earned:
Thursday: 3,494 (6Thursday)
Friday: -1.404 (115thThursday)
Move Scores Earned:
Thursday: 5,564 (1Holy)
Friday: -5,820 (143rdrd)
“This sucks. I mean, I’ve never led a tournament and missed a cut,” Spieth said. “I wouldn’t lose anything. I made a bad swing, (but) I didn’t really make any bad decisions.”
Spieth could go chapter and verse in the odd places he found himself: behind a tree or on the edge of a bunker with an awkward stance. His drive hit the cart path and went into the water on No. 9. He had a weird bunker on No. 10.
Spieth will return home before returning to the PGA Tour at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. He will have plenty of time to shake off this terrible, terrible, bad, very bad day.
Players since 2011 who led or shared the lead after the first round and did not make the cut:
Matt Every, 2020 Arnold Palmer Invitational (shared lead)
Vaughn Taylor, 2018 FedEx St. Jude Championship (shared leadership)
Zecheng Dou and Xinjun Zhang, 2018 Zurich Classic of New Orleans (Co-Lead, Team Event)
Andrew Loupe, 2016 Travelers Championship (shared lead)
Keegan Bradley, 2016 Valspar Championship (shared lead)
Danny Lee, 2014 Valspar Championship (shared lead)
Camilo Villegas, Honda Classic 2013 (full lead)
Jim Renner, 2011 Travelers Championship (outright lead)
Ben Martin, 2011 Genesis Invitational (co-lead)