Golf
Ian O'Connor, ESPN Senior Writer 9y

Fortuitous breaks key to Jordan Spieth's Grand Slam hopes

Golf

Bobby Jones was taking a walk and enjoying a cigarette break outside his New York City hotel in the summer of 1930 when he stumbled upon a police officer dealing with an unruly knot of pedestrian traffic.

"What's all the fuss about?" Jones asked playfully.

"Ah," the cop responded. "Just a parade for some damn golfer."

Dr. Bob Jones IV was on the phone the other day explaining how his grandfather loved telling that story to family and friends. And with New York recovering from its latest parade -- this one honoring the American women's soccer team that won the World Cup -- Jones didn't need to point out that his grandfather remains the only individual athlete to have been honored with two such ceremonies in the big city.

But the point of the anecdote was to explain the difference between what Bobby Jones faced after winning the first two majors in 1930, and what Jordan Spieth faces now as he hopes to extend his majors winning streak to three in The Open at St. Andrews. Jones earned his second ticker-tape parade (his first came in 1926) after winning the British Amateur and British Open, with the U.S. Open and U.S. Amateur still on deck in what would go down as the only calendar-year Grand Slam in golf history.

"The pressure on him was absolutely enormous," Jones said. "However, there are some pressures that Jordan Spieth faces today that didn't exist for my grandfather. If you asked the police officer that day in New York who Bobby Jones was, he would've known without a shadow of a doubt. But because of the nature of the media back then, or lack of it, he had no earthly idea the person he was talking to was indeed Bobby Jones.

"Mr. Spieth can't go anywhere or say anything or do anything without it immediately being reported on Twitter or Facebook or SportsCenter or the Golf Channel. My grandfather didn't have to contend with that instant recognizability. So if Jordan wins at St. Andrews, he should buy a pair of earplugs and blinders. If he thinks he's in a media fishbowl now, wait until he puts three majors behind him."

Of course, after winning yet again at the John Deere Classic on Sunday in a playoff, Spieth would sign up for that problem in a heartbeat. He would love to deal with the 24/7 scrutiny and surveillance of a media culture Bobby Jones couldn't have fathomed in his wildest dreams rather than confront the alternative -- joining Arnold Palmer, Jack NicklausĀ and Tiger Woods as titans who won the Masters and the U.S. Open two months apart before failing overseas in their attempts to become the first in the Masters era to capture the calendar-year Slam.

Spieth would love to match Ben Hogan's 3-for-3 season in 1953, and then do him one better at the PGA Championship. (Hogan couldn't compete in the '53 PGA because the dates conflicted with The Open at Carnoustie.) But beyond the staggering talent he showed at Augusta National, and the grit and fortitude he showed at Chambers Bay, Spieth will need the kind of break at St. Andrews that Palmer didn't get there in 1960, and that Nicklaus and Woods didn't get at Muirfield in 1972 and 2002, respectively.

Spieth might need the kind of break Jones got at the U.S. Open 85 years ago at Interlachen in Edina, Minnesota, where legend has it that his shot headed for splashdown in a pond on the par-5 ninth bounced off a lily pad and onto dry land, leading to an up-and-down birdie.

"My grandfather believed that in every single tournament he ever won or lost, there were lucky breaks that either made him or broke him," said Jones, a sports psychologist who lives outside his grandfather's hometown of Atlanta. "That's why he said it was so important to not let any externals fluster you.

"During the heat wave at Interlachen, when a guy came up to him and said, 'Bob, did you hear it's 105 degrees in the shade today?' he just said, 'Thank God we don't have to play in the shade.' My grandfather just felt, 'Hey, it's 105 degrees for everybody. And if we get a rain delay, well, everybody has to deal with the rain delay.'"

Truth is, not every rain delay is created equal. In 1960, still flying high after his signature comeback in the U.S. Open at Cherry Hills, Palmer traveled to Scotland with his sports writing pal from Pittsburgh, Bob Drum. Three decades after Jones' sports writing pal from Atlanta, O.B. Keeler, came up with the words "Grand Slam" to describe the feat of winning the U.S. and British Amateurs and U.S. and British Opens, Drum had a role in reviving the term. Palmer told him on the plane that a new Grand Slam of pro majors should replace the outdated version. Although Drum was skeptical, he would take up his friend's cause in the press. Palmer's appearance at St. Andrews was the ultimate game-changer. Before the world's best and most charismatic golfer declared The Open a required destination, travel expenses and mandatory qualifiers overseas kept American players away in droves.

Palmer was 7 shots off the lead after two rounds, but he cut that deficit to 4 in the Friday-morning round of what was supposed to be a 36-hole final day. Torrential rains washed out the afternoon round, angering the American star, who had momentum and an unshakable belief that there would never, ever be a rainout at The Open. Palmer ultimately lost to Kel Nagle on Saturday by a single stroke, and he still calls it one of his most painful defeats.

In his Latrobe, Pennsylvania, office 46 years later, a visiting reporter started to ask Palmer, "In your heart, do you feel without that rainout ..." before the legend interrupted him and barked, "Yes! The answer to your question is, 'Yes.' You don't think I know what the question is, do you? ... I was looking out the window of the Rusacks Hotel and I saw the rain coming, and my wife and father were there with me and I said, 'Don't worry. They never stop The Open. They will play.' I was never thinking they were going to stop it, and they did, and that was the end of the story."

In 1972, Palmer's lifelong rival, Nicklaus, didn't run into stormy weather at Muirfield. He ran into the rare opponent who tormented him, Lee Trevino, and the damnedest shot of Trevino's life.

Nicklaus had rallied from a 6-stroke deficit on the final day, but bogeyed the 16th and parred the par-5 17th before finishing at 5 under and waiting on Trevino and Tony Jacklin, who shared the lead at 6 under. Trevino had beaten Nicklaus at the 1968 and 1971 U.S. Opens, but he was making a mess of the 17th hole and sitting four on a bank behind the green while damning himself for possibly giving away The Open and restoring Nicklaus' Grand Slam bid.

"Trevino's blown," Nicklaus' caddie, Jimmy Dickinson, assured his man. And then Trevino pulled his 9-iron, took a seemingly indifferent swipe at his ball and watched it roll into the cup.

"It was a give-up shot," Nicklaus would say years later, "but it went in the hole."

A rattled Jacklin three-putted, and after seemingly spending the entire Open chipping in from improbable places, Trevino had the Claret Jug in his hands as a gutted Nicklaus staggered into the press area. "The PGA Championship was in Oakland Hills that year," recalled Dave Anderson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist, "and Jack looked over at Norman Mair, a Scottish writer, and said, 'Norman, I guess I cost you a trip to Detroit.' To me it was the classiest thing I ever heard any athlete say in a time of devastation."

At the same Scottish course 30 years later, Tiger Woods was 2 shots off the 36-hole lead and in firm position to secure his third major victory of the season and his eighth in his past 12 attempts. He had the remarkable Tiger Slam of 2000-01 behind him, and it appeared nothing could stop him from ripping off another streak of four in a row -- only this one tucked neatly inside a calendar year.

But punishing winds and freezing rain blew Woods out of the ballpark, reducing him to a quivering wreck. Woods shot what was then a career-worst 81, and after making his only birdie of the third round at No. 17, he mocked himself by pumping his arms in the air and taking a theatrical bow to the fans.

"It was the hardest conditions I've ever played in," Woods would say. He punched back with a final round of 65, but it was merely a moral victory for a megastar who never played for them.

As much as Woods has to be taken seriously this week at St. Andrews, where he's prevailed twice, a man who hasn't won a major since 2008 can't realistically harbor visions of a Grand Slam to come. Woods just wants to end his personal drought, and ending it at the expense of Jordan Spieth's Grand Slam ambitions would make major trophy No. 15 that much more memorable.

But Spieth is the one with the eye of the Tiger now. In the immediate wake of his victory at Chambers Bay, the 21-year-old Texan was deemed good enough to make history by no less than his mother, father and brother, as well as USGA executive director Mike Davis, who called Spieth "absolutely capable" of becoming the only man not named Bobby Jones to go 4-for-4.

Can he really do it? Jones, the sports psychologist, does not count himself among the skeptics.

"Jordan Spieth has a phenomenal ability to stay in the moment," he said. "He obviously has a bit of a temper, yet is one of those rare people who can get something out of his system very quickly and pull himself back to the matter at hand. Not many people could double-bogey the 71st hole at the U.S. Open and then turn around and make a fantastic birdie at the 72nd."

Bobby Jones could, and maybe a handful of others. At age 28, weeks after completing his epic 1930 season at Merion, he retired from golf to focus on being a lawyer, husband and father. The lifelong amateur was always amused by the revamped version of the Grand Slam, thinking it a bit artificial that the Masters and PGA Championship replaced the U.S. and British Amateurs in what was once called the impregnable quadrilateral.

But that was then, and this is now.

"This is great for the game," Jones said. "We were very blessed by what Tiger's dominance did for golf, and now Jordan has a chance to do something nobody's done in the history of the professional game. My grandfather capped his career with the Grand Slam, and it would be remarkable if Jordan was able to start his career with one.

"Of course there's a part of me that wants the Grand Slam to be exclusively tied to Bobby Jones, but records are made to be broken. Jordan Spieth was so classy in the way he won the Masters and U.S. Open, and you have to admire the way he conducts himself in the fishbowl world of championship golf. So I can't think of a person my grandfather would be more pleased to win it than him."

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