The Jordan Spieth Era Is Long Gone

Jordan Spieth isn’t lost in the abyss.

He is, according to Data Golf, the 42nd-best player in the world. He is 51st in the FedEx Cup standings—one spot ahead of Mark Hubbard and one behind Taylor Moore. Most of his underlying metrics are solid, including a big jump forward in how well he drives the ball.

Spieth isn’t lost. He’s just a good—but nowhere close to great—PGA Tour player.

The Spieth Plateau

It’s hard to believe that it was 11 years ago when a 19-year-old Jordan Spieth won the 2013 John Deere Classic in dramatic fashion by holing a bunker shot on the 72nd hole and then winning a playoff over Zach Johnson and David Hearn.

Spieth was an immediate sensation, winning five times in 2015. Two of those wins were majors—and Spieth had a realistic shot at capturing the grand slam. He fell one birdie short of a playoff in that year’s Open Championship at St Andrews and lost a duel against Jason Day in the ensuing PGA Championship.

Everyone remembers Spieth’s prolific putting performance from 2015, but he had a phenomenal season in all facets of his game. Spieth ranked fourth in strokes gained tee-to-green to match a similarly splendid short game.

He fell off slightly in 2016, winning twice and famously collapsing on the back nine of that year’s Masters. But the following year, 2017, Spieth statistically returned to the heights of 2015. He ranked second in strokes gained tee-to-green and was among the top iron players in the world. Spieth won three times, including the Open Championship for his third major victory.

We couldn’t have known it back then, but 2017 was likely the end of the Spieth era where he could be considered one of the most dominant players in the world. While flashes of Spiethian brilliance have reappeared from time to time, we haven’t consistently seen that elite level of play from Jordan over the past seven years.

Here are Spieth’s strokes gained total rankings on the Tour throughout his career. This is simply a measure of how well he gets the ball in the hole compared to his peers:

• 2013 — 6th
• 2014 — 20th
• 2015 — 2nd
• 2016 — 5th
• 2017 — 2nd
• 2018 — 32nd
• 2019 — 59th
• 2020 — 99th
• 2021 — 26th
• 2022 — 30th
• 2023 — 38th
• 2024 — 25th

As you can see, Spieth started to sink after 2017 and hasn’t proven to be a top 20 player in the world for seven years now. In fact, the best five years of his career were the first five years.

He has just two victories in his past 146 Tour starts. He did have a hot stretch early in 2021 to briefly reach No. 2 overall in Data Golf, but he quickly fell back to the No. 20-50 range.

While Spieth has seven top-10 finishes in majors since 2018—he could have easily won the 2021 Masters if not for a horrid putting week—he has also finished outside the top 30 in majors 10 times in that stretch.

He gets the star treatment for his past, but that isn’t based on much of anything from the past seven years.

And this season has been another totally fine but unremarkable campaign. He has three top-10 results but no top-25 finishes in his other 11 starts.

What Is Holding Spieth Back?

There is a sentiment that Spieth rode a hot putter to become a top player, but he reached those superstar heights largely because of his approach play.

Spieth was a strong iron player during the best two seasons of his career, but he’s been well off that pace since 2018.

Take a look at Spieth’s strokes gained approach rankings since 2015:

• 2015 — 11th
• 2016 — 88th
• 2017 — 2nd
• 2018 — 33rd
• 2019 — 145th
• 2020 — 97th
• 2021 — 41st
• 2022 — 31st
• 2023 — 71st
• 2024 — 131st

According to Data Golf’s 50-round moving average for approach play, Spieth is almost exactly on the 50th percentile line—indicating that he is perfectly average as an iron player.

That’s successful if you just want to hold onto your card each year, but it’s a huge problem if you want to be a top player in the world. Approach play is a critical separator on Tour.

Putting is a traditionally volatile stat in professional golf, and Spieth was more on the positive side of that volatility early in his career. Here are his strokes gained putting stats:

• 2013 — 60th
• 2014 — 20th
• 2015 — 9th
• 2016 — 2nd
• 2017 — 48th
• 2018 — 123rd
• 2019 — 2nd
• 2020 — 105th
• 2021 — 33rd
• 2022 — 155th
• 2023 — 79th
• 2024 — 48th

It’s hard to make the case that Spieth is a particularly great putter relative to other Tour players. He’s enjoyed stretches of brilliance, but it hasn’t always correlated to success. For instance, he struggled in 2019 despite that being one of his best putting seasons.

How Spieth’s Career Compares to Top Players

I wanted to compare Spieth to six other top players from his generation: Justin Thomas, Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Xander Schauffele, Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler.

Thomas and Schauffele were from the same high school class of 2011, so that is a particularly interesting comparison.

One of my favorite career measurements is top-5 finish percentage. It shows how often players are getting in contention. Here is where those six players stand for that metric:

• Scheffler — 32.5%
• Rahm — 30.7%
• McIlroy — 30.5%
• Schauffele — 24.6%
• Thomas — 22.5%
• Koepka — 22.3%
• Spieth — 19.8%

This is a very tough look for Spieth. He even lags behind Koepka, a player known for no-showing in Tour events before he left for LIV. This is a large gap given that each of these players is deep into their career. Spieth has made 273 Tour starts, the most from that group.

In terms of win rate, Spieth is only ahead of Schauffele among these seven players I’ve chosen.

• McIlroy — 10.4%
• Scheffler — 8.1%
• Rahm — 7.2%
• Thomas — 6.5%
• Koepka — 5.0%
• Spieth — 4.8%
• Schauffele — 4.6%

Spieth won a lot early in his career, reaching 9.1% in his first 121 starts. Only McIlroy was ahead of that pace.

Now Spieth is only ahead of Schauffele, someone who has been known for struggling to win prior to the PGA Championship at Valhalla (after this article published, Schauffele won the Open Championship and surpassed Spieth in career win percentage).

The bottom line: Spieth is near the bottom of these seven players when doing a career comparison. The big exception is that he does have three majors, which is ahead of Scheffler (2), Rahm (2), Thomas (2) and Schauffele (1).

Final Thoughts

The point I’m making in this article is that Jordan Spieth no longer feels like a star player, and the stats back that claim.

I don’t think he has truly been in that superstar category for a long time now.

I enjoy watching him play. He’s entertaining and talented. And Spieth can still play at a high level any given week.

However, the era of him rattling off multiple wins in a season seems to be over. It would require a large shift of his baseline play to reach that point.

Spieth is only 30 years old and will probably have more chances to win majors. He could have a renaissance and get back to being a top 10 player in the world.

It doesn’t feel like we’re close to that, though.

The story of Spieth might be that he played his best golf early in his career and then regressed to being a solid but unspectacular Tour player.

Barring a miraculous turnaround, Spieth shouldn’t be compared to guys like McIlroy or Scheffler. Those players are in another category altogether.

How would you characterize Spieth’s place in the game? Leave a comment below.