In His Prime

I am a man that is not afraid to admit his mistakes. Earlier this year, I named Brooks Koepka as the future of American golf (See post on February 8, 2015). Don’t get me wrong, Brooks Koepka is a great golfer that I do expect to play a large role in the world of professional golf over the next few decades. The problem is, he is not Jordan Spieth. (In fairness to me though, I did say that I expect Spieth to “very ably challenge” Koepka.)

On Sunday, Spieth capped off one of the better years in the history of golf by claiming the FedEx Cup thanks to a victory at the Tour Championship, and put the notions of Jason Day being player of the year to bed. There is no doubt that Spieth’s five total victories plus the FedEx Cup this year are impressive. Almost as noteworthy is the fact that Spieth is so good that he shot a total of 271 at the Tour Championship and basically wrote the title of this article for me. (If this sentence doesn’t make sense, don’t worry about it. If it does, take a few moments to enjoy the fact that this sentence makes sense to you.) What really made 2015 a special year for Spieth though is what he did in the four tournaments that define most professional golfer’s careers. He took home the Masters in record tying fashion. Then he followed it up by grinding out a win at the U.S. Open, albeit with some help. With two majors under his belt, something most professional golfers only dream about as a career major total, Spieth almost did the unthinkable at St. Andrews as he came up painfully short of hoisting the Claret Jug and setting up utter chaos at Whistling Straits. With the single season grand slam no longer a possibility, Spieth could have had a letdown at the PGA Championship, but once again he battled, and it took a record setting performance by Jason Day to keep Spieth’s hands off of the Wanamaker Trophy.

Jordan Spieth is indeed in his prime. Surely a crazy thought as he has spent only 22 and some change years on this planet, but nevertheless true. Not only that, he probably has at least two decades of being in his prime ahead of him. What really makes the future of professional golf bright though is the fact that it is not a one man show. Jason Day made this very clear by having a truly remarkable late summer that included his first major championship and was good enough to seriously put him in the player of the year conversation with Spieth; a conversation that had looked like it was over in June. One must not forget the Northern Irishman either. It is amazing to think that, just a year ago, Rory McIlroy was the man with two majors in one season and on top of the world of golf. I suspect that he is poised to bounce back next year. (Although I am not entirely sure that it could be called a bounce back year. He won multiple times this year and had a pretty solid season. He was just overshadowed by Spieth and Day.) Finally, it bears mentioning that Rick Fowler was no slouch in 2015 either. It was nice to see him finally compile a trophy case worthy of his bank account. Any one of these four men by himself would be exciting. All four pushing each other to be the best golfer in the world. Now that has the makings of being something special.