Around the wider world of golf: So Yeon Ryu set a few records as she became the LPGA's first two-time winner this season at the Walmart NW Arkansas Championship; Andres Romero won the BMW International Open on the ET; Fred Couples won the American Family Insurance Championship on the Champions Tour; Adam Schenk won the Lincoln Land Charity Championship on the Web.com Tour; Emma Talley got her first Symetra Tour win at the weather-shortened Island Resort Championship; and as I mentioned yesterday, Harry Ellis won the British Amateur Championship.
It's been a long time since someone won the Travelers Championship in their first try -- that was Phil Blackmar way back in 1985. And Jordan Spieth did his best to avoid breaking that record.
But somehow, in the midst of spraying his drives all over the place, he managed to tie or set some other records and give himself a chance to win after all.
Of course, he couldn't do it the easy way. Oh, no. He struggled to separate himself from his fellow competitors. I don't mean Boo Weekley or Patrick Reed, the early challengers, or even Charley Hoffman and Danny Lee, who managed to post just short of Spieth's score. He managed to elude those pursuers fairly well.
No, I mean Daniel Berger, who defended his title at the FedEx St. Jude just a couple of weeks back and said that he felt he should at least be mentioned in the talk about Jordan.
Well, he got his point across Sunday. Jordan could feel the Bergermeister breathing down his neck in the closing holes, and it took a well-played scramble from the sand at 18 just to get him into a playoff with Daniel.
Of course, as Daniel himself put it, "Jordan does Jordan things" and that's just what he did in the playoff, holing out an unbelievable long bunker shot for birdie and leaving Berger with a long, long, LONG birdie putt just to tie.
Needless to say, it didn't fall. Jordan snagged his second win of the season (his first was the AT&T, in case you've forgotten) and even seemed a bit embarrassed about it. As he said himself:
"If I was in Berger's shoes, I'd be cursing Jordan Spieth right now for the break off the tee and then holing a 30-yard bunker shot. That's a lot of luck."But instead, Daniel tweeted that he just hoped, in a few weeks, to be chest-bumping Jordan the way caddie Michael Greller did. And he probably will, as his runner-up finish likely made him a lock for the Presidents Cup team.
In the meantime, Jordan Spieth snags another Limerick Summary -- and another record, becoming the first player ever to get ten of them before his 24th birthday. (Tiger may have gotten to ten wins quicker than Jordan, but I wasn't writing Limerick Summaries back then!)
Jordan's fairway play wasn't so grandThe photo came from the tournament page at PGATOUR.com.
So he played his best shots from the sand—
First a sandie to tie,
Then a hole-out. That's why
He's on top… it's just not HOW he planned.
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