Jordan Spieth doesn’t see a new year as hitting the Reset button
Five wins, two majors, a FedEx Cup, $22 million in total on-course earnings. There’s good reason why Jordan Spieth was a little melancholy on New Year’s Eve.
Since Spieth is not yet Superman and can’t reverse the earth’s rotation, the calendar moved forward to 2016, and with a new year comes questions of how the 22-year-old is going to manage to deliver an encore.
The Texan, however, prefers not to see it that way.
“Doesn’t an encore mean that the show is then over?” Spieth asked rhetorically on Tuesday at the Hyundai Tournament of Champions on Maui. “I hope I’ve got like 40 years out here.”
Alright, fine. Spieth is thinking about his run in longer-range terms than the 12-month calendar. Perhaps that’s because he has a recent example in Rory McIlroy of how a player can get squashed for failing to live up to the expectations of their last year.
McIlroy won the PGA Championship to conclude 2012, winning a second major in as many years. Then his 2013 was a flop, in part because of trying to live up to the expectations of being the best player in the world and signing a massive new endorsement deal with Nike commiserate with his résumé. Last year, McIlroy didn’t even get to defend both of the majors he won in 2014 thanks to an ankle injury incurred while playing soccer with friends. McIlroy was lambasted for choosing to have a life outside of golf, but, with a win at the end of the year in Dubai, announced he was redoubling his efforts to the game.
Spieth sees the pitfall of thinking about golf, perhaps the longest of games with the biggest ebb and flow, in calendar-defined terms.
“It just seems that you’re judging from the previous year in my mind,” Spieth said. “That’s the general public, so I give you my perspective as being in the general public for somebody else.
“For me, I’m not even thinking of it as a new year. I’m just thinking we had a three-week break, and we’re just continuing to hopefully stay at the same level.”
We’ll find out what level he is on starting Thursday at Kapalua.
Ryan Ballengee is a Yahoo Sports contributor. Find him on Facebook and Twitter.
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