Johnny Miller: Spieth’s still my man

Johnny Miller is still backing Spieth despite near misses.

Close but no cigar at The Masters. Then another disappointing finish last Sunday at golf’s “fifth Major”, the Players’ Championship at Sawgrass.

So for all his talent, and despite the fact he’s only 20, already there are many who suspect Jordan Spieth does not have the temperament to match his ability, and that he’s destined to become one of the game’s nearly men.

Just don’t count Johnny Miller among their number.

“He is the most exciting thing in golf right now,” contends the former Open and US champion.

“Spieth is the average American’s new guy because he has already put himself in the position to win so many times.

“TPC Sawgrass has not been kind to 54-hole leaders, and in the past seven years only Tiger Woods has won from that position.”

The doubters highlight the fact that while Spieth has been in the top five after 54 holes eight times since the start of 2013, he has only once gone on to win.

The only other player who can get near that accomplishment is World No 1 Woods and he went on to win five out of nine of them!

It has also been pointed out that Spieth lost his cool somewhat on the back nine at Augusta. And he was struggling unsuccessfully to regain his composure when he leaked a drive left after dropping two strokes early on last Sunday.

Temperament is a huge part of golf, as every fan knows. Go back to 1999 and Sergio Garcia at the US PGA, when he finished one behind Tiger Woods. He was then, like Spieth, only 20 years old, but was going to achieve everything.

But when it didn’t happen, that started to get to him. Miller agrees that Spieth has been showing signs of his age and inexperience, particularly last Sunday at Sawgrass.

“He started leaving his putts short, which is a sign the pressure was ramping up,” he says.

“But he hasn’t been a pro for very long, and has had a meteoric rise. You have to go from Tiger Woods to Seve Ballesteros to Jack Nicklaus for what Jordan Spieth has done.”

So Miller is still very much in young Spieth’s corner.

“The putter let him down over the final 36 holes at Sawgrass,” he says. “Otherwise he would have cruised right in and won it.”

The debate will go on to the US Open at Pinehurst next month and The Open Championship at Royal Liverpool in July for sure. But if Spieth IS feeling the pressure, then he could try copying Fuzzy Zoeller.

He whistles his way around a golf course when things are not going as they should.

“It’s a release mechanism,” he told me long ago, and it has certainly been the answer for the two-time Major winner, who never appears to let anything bother him. So if Spieth is ever feeling the heat, all he has to do is whistle!