CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) – Jordan Spieth felt he was on the verge of shooting himself out of the PGA Championship. Instead of looking at his scorecard, he considered what he had left to play at Quail Hollow.
He gunned his putt from just short of the fifth green about 10 feet by the hole and missed that one for bogey. He did the same thing on the par-3 sixth hole, and suddenly he was 3 over for the round. At that point, he looked a lot closer to a weekend off than the final leg of the career Grand Slam.
Waiting in the fairway on the par-5 seventh gave him time to think.
“I thought to myself: ‘They are not giving birdies at all. You have to pull off some solid shots to make birdies on those holes,'” Spieth said.
When the green cleared, he ripped a hybrid from 246 yards over the water and onto the green, where it settled 30 feet away on the fringe to set up a two-putt birdie. He hit another good drive on the short par-4 eighth and hit a wedge that skipped and stopped a foot from the cup for another birdie.