Jordan Spieth's iconic Birkdale shots might be gone, but belief remains

Royal Birkdale boasts two notable superlatives for Jordan Spieth.

Spieth’s greatest shot and putt in a career full of great ones? Both came on these storied Southport links nearly a decade ago, in 2017, when Spieth captured the Claret Jug, his third and most recent major trophy, with an iconic closing stretch.

While Spieth’s adventurous bogey on Birkdale’s 13th hole, where he took a pair of drops that left him hitting his third shot from the practice range, gets talked about often, what Spieth did after that to eventually beat Matt Kuchar by three strokes on that Sunday afternoon is stuff of legends.

First, there was the stuffed 6-iron at the 199-yard, par-3 14th hole that lipped out before setting up a 5-foot birdie.

Then came the 48-foot eagle at the par-5 15th, where Spieth famously yelled at caddie Michael Greller to, “Go get that!”

What’s strange, though, is that neither shot can be emulated this week, or for the foreseeable future, byproducts of significant changes to Birkdale’s layout that included removing the 14th hole entirely – it’s now a short-game practice area for members – while repurposing the 15th hole for new par-5 14th and par-3 15th holes.

“Maybe the best shot and the best putt I've ever hit don't exist anymore, which is a little unusual,” said Spieth, who saw the new-look part of the property for the first time on Sunday afternoon and made a point to revisit the old 14th tee box, where he made that memorable swing.

“In some regard, it's kind of nice,” Spieth added. “It was like a walk-off. I go back and try to do it again and I don't hit as good of a shot, then it's not as cool. Yeah, it was interesting to see because the hole is still there. The tee boxes are still there. … You could play 19 holes here, it seems. It kind of flows nicely.”

While he can no longer hit those shots, Spieth, now 32 years old and ranked 51st in the world rankings, still believes he can hit the ones required to lift another jug. His last top-10 anywhere came at the Memorial Tournament – last summer – while he’s not done so in a major since his T-4 at the 2023 Masters. But Spieth doesn’t feel like he’s being unrealistic when he says his game feels way better than the results.

He points to the fact that he’s led a tournament in each of the four strokes-gained categories, albeit not all at once.

He also asserts that there are certain things he can do better in his game than he could when he was the No. 1 player in the world.

“Therefore, there should be nothing to stop me in my own head to be able to search and believe that I can reach that again,” Spieth said.

“I feel like I have a lot of great golf in front of me,” Spieth adds. “I feel like I'm way more optimistic than I've been at a lot of different points in my career. I'm quite frustrated with the results considering I know where my game is at. It's better than it was four or five years ago when I got back to top 10 in the world. … At the same time, it's a stay-the-course mentality, and sometimes stuff like that is delayed. Sometimes you get rewarded right away, like I did back then maybe in a bit of a lucky fashion, and I understand that sometimes it's delayed, and that's how it feels like it is right now.

“Knowing me, when the lid pops off the hole, I feel like I can go on a run about as hot as anybody can run.”

Like Birkdale, it may just look a little different than it did nine years ago.