Spieth, And Finding Your Joy

A Meditation On Happiness

The last time Jordan Spieth won a golf tournament was the 2017 British Open, held in July that year. I remember where I was that weekend - in Toronto, staying with a friend from University who had a job there that summer. I took a train down on the Friday, and on it I was furiously refreshing for news from Royal Birkdale as Spieth tried to hold on to his Thursday co-lead.

My memories of that tournament are a bit fuzzy, because it receded from the priority list as I spent the weekend in the city with friends, going to a MLS game on the Saturday night and a CFL game on the Monday night of my extended weekend down, but I remember him winning, and the happiness I felt as I watched the final shots on my phone in a downtown Toronto shopping mall. I've watched that win a lot in the last year, as quarantine has stretched on and I've wanted to try and recreate the happiness of a Spieth victory, long without one after a winless drought that felt endless at times.

And then he went and won today, and I felt a joy that I forgot I could feel.

…

Is Spieth winning the world's biggest thing? No, it's an athlete I'll probably never meet winning a tournament that's not very important, and yet I'm overjoyed by it, because life is hard, finding victory is complicated, and we can all take things just a bit less seriously. I tweeted last night a plea for Jordan to find it "one time" - and he delivered in spades.

I've wondered what it would feel like when he won again for me, a devoted Spieth fan whose love of golf was saved by Spieth's 2015 Masters victory. I love watching Jordan, in all his glory and all his failure. He is a risk taker, a gambler, and sometimes an unconscionably stupid man - and then, other times, he makes shots you cannot even imagine pulling off. I love him because he's rough around the edges on the course, a less precise golfer, and he's entertaining as hell. Justin Thomas, famously his close friend from childhood, is probably a better golfer than Jordan, but Thomas is boring and clinical. JT will hit the fairway, hit his iron to 8-16 feet, and then if he makes an above average of those shots he wins. It's boring. Jordan is chaotic, crazy, excitable and must see TV. There's no hero shot too crazy for the Longhorn, and there's nobody who can make a moment - for good or for ill - like the 3 time Major Champion.

Spieth winning is also a good reminder of how fickle things are, and how we don't always appreciate how little the past can matter. Spieth had 11 PGA Tour victories, and those three majors, when he was 24 years and 1 month old. He turns 28 later this year and just got victory 12. We were talking about him in an all time great context three and a half years ago, and now we're treating victory at Valero like the greatest accomplishment of the decade. These things are hard, and the lines - between genius and disaster - are much more narrow than anyone acknowledges.

We all overvalue what has recently happened, but we also love anything that can be called a trend. The takes on Spieth - both that he was an all time great when things were going well, and that he was never as good as people claimed when things fell apart - have always been bad, and more importantly they've been confirmation bias at work. You can say that Spieth was lucky to have three majors that young - that he got lucky for Dustin to three putt from 12 feet at Chambers, and that he should have had to go back to the tee on 13 at Birkdale instead of taking 20 minutes to line up that shot, but by the same token he probably should have made that playoff at St. Andrew's in 2015 and, of course, he was cruising at Augusta in 2016 until 2 in the water. Water found its level.

Spieth isn't the greatest athlete I've ever rooted for, but he is the most fun. Him yelling "Go Get That" to Michael Grellar, his long time caddy, when he drained the long eagle on 15 to win that 2017 Open Championship, him holding out against Daniel Berger in Hartford, him making the run of his life on Sunday at Augusta in 2018… these are moments I'll remember forever, moments that bring peace at times of darkness. I loved watching the run to the top for the first time, and I hung around for the darkness. But now, we're back, because Spieth is back.

I wondered how I'd feel, and there was a part of me that wondered if the moment of Spieth's eventual success would feel a letdown compared to how I built it up, and then today happened. It was more than I ever could have imagined, and the smile that has been plastered on my face since Spieth drained his birdie putt on 17 shows no signs of abating any time soon. This is just pure bliss, unmistakable joy, all because Jordan Spieth won.

I'm sure there's some broader point to make - about how history defying events happen more often nowadays, a meditation on the nature of living through history, both good and bad - in the history here, and I'll probably break it all out at some point when the ideas for columns run dry. But for now, Spieth's victory just serves as a reminder of a basic truth in life - find the things that can bring you joy, and treasure them deeply. It sounds trite, but it's true, because I'm just so damn happy right now.