Different Strokes: Jordan Spieth leads golf's Crystal Maze

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  • It's been an eventful week in golf.

    If a PGA Tour season is like an episode of ‘The Crystal Maze’, then the best players in the game have finally made it to where they want to be.

    They’ve come through the Aztec section, overcome the challenges in the Futuristic and Medieval zones, and added to their time allowance in the Industrial challenges. Now they have finally reached the Crystal Dome – the FedEx Cup playoffs – where the aim, literally and figuratively, is to swing your arms as wildly as you can and come away with as much cash as possible.

    Once again $10 million is on offer to one lucky player, should they finish atop the standings at the end of next month’s Tour Championship. Should they win that event as well (which the overall winner often ends up having to do) then they will collect nearly $12m at East Lake GC, a staggering sum of money for even the most successful players around.

    Jordan Spieth has already won over $9m in 2015, but he could double his pot with a strong finish over the next five weeks. Entering The Barclays this week as the world No. 1 for the first time, the Texan could cap off a stunning year in perfect style.

    “It’s something that would put some food on the table for sure,” Spieth joked on Tuesday. “Yeah, it’s something I’d love to win some day. The names on that trophy are no fluke. And so it’s something that hopefully I get a lot of chances at.”

    The format of the playoffs is often criticised, however, with results at East Lake invariably having such a huge bearing on the final result. Spieth goes into the playoffs with a stranglehold on the top spot but, once everyone arrives for the Tour Championship, the standings are essentially reset – meaning the guy who squeaks in to the finale in the 30th and last spot can pip Spieth to the overall bonanza if he wins the Tour Championship and the 22-year-old finishes somewhere outside the top-20.

    “It’s pretty much, ‘did you win East Lake?’” Spieth acknowledged. “There’s been circumstances where [the Tour Championship winner did not win the overall prize] but for the most part, if you win East Lake [you win the FedEx Cup].

    “I think it’s a little odd that it just completely resets, because if you want it to be the true champion of the year, it wouldn’t necessarily reset for the final, even if you do make it worth more points throughout the playoffs.”

    Of course it suits Spieth to be annoyed about the format, considering he would be the one to benefit most from a system that offered a greater reward to the year’s in-form golfer. For the fans, however, the system means we have essentially a level playing field running towards the lucrative conclusion – meaning the likes of Rory McIlroy, Jason Day, Rickie Fowler and Dustin Johnson (and past winners like Billy Horschel, Brandt Snedeker and Bill Haas) all have a chance to thrust themselves into contention before the big finale.

    One person who won’t be there, of course, is Tiger Woods – the 14-time major champion narrowly failing in his quest to qualify for the first play-off event with a t-10th finish at last week’s Wyndham Championship.

    Woods needed to win the event to be certain of making the playoffs – and was in the penultimate pairing on Sunday – but his game let him down at a crucial moment as a mediocre final round 70 left him four shots behind winner Davis Love III.

    “This is my off-season right now,” Woods said afterwards. “[I’ll shut it down] for awhile. It will be nice … I got lots of soccer games and practices to go to so I’ll be doing that and just working out, training and trying to get more fit.”

    While he is doing that, the game’s best players will be fighting it out for the big money. That’s the risk and reward of the Crystal Maze – on the road to the Crystal Zone there are always a few who get left stranded in a bunker.

    Chapeau to Mr. DeChambeau
    To say newly-crowned US Amateur champion Bryson DeChambeau sees the game of golf a little differently to everyone else would be an understatement. 

    When the rest of the players in the field for last week’s tournament were enjoying themselves at a pre-tournament barbecue, DeChambeau was in his room soaking his golf balls in Epsom salt – to find out which ones were even slightly out of balance.

    About one in every three were, and so were discarded without hesitation. That is just one example of the idiosyncratically scientific way the 21-year-old approaches golf * – an approach that saw him base his early golf swing on an instruction book that breaks the swing down into 24 parts with 144 variations for different shot types and ball flights.

    The hallmarks of that construction-by-numbers swing are still there in DeChambeau’s current technique, which is like Jim Furyk’s in the way it is easily distinguished from any other competitor. But, just like Furyk’s, DeChambeau’s swing is also beautifully repeatable – something that allowed him to beat Open Championship hero Paul Dunne 3&2 in one round, on the way to a mammoth 7&6 win over Derek Bard in the final.

    “I never thought in my wildest dreams that I would be able to win this championship, and with all the dedication and hard work that I’ve put into making this possible, it’s finally realised and I’m so excited and so honored to be the US Amateur champion,” DeChambeau said.

    DeChambeau becomes only the fifth player to win the NCAA individual title (for college golfers) and the US Amateur in the same season. The previous four? Jack Nicklaus, Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods and Ryan Moore.

    Based on that alone, it is clear that DeChambeau is a player to watch with great interest over the coming seasons. Add in his unique approach to the game and, in the age of ball-striking automatons, his progress will be especially intriguing.

    “There’s a bunch of different ways to play the game of golf,” DeChambeau said. “You don’t need to play it one way. It doesn’t need to be one swing that’s perfect out there.”

    * Other ways DeChambeau is unique: He wears a Ben Hogan-esque flat cap on the course, all his irons are cut to the same length, in his spare time he likes to write cursive script backwards and left-handed. “I do these sorts of things to keep my mind off of golf and to help my fine motor skills with my hands, create more sensitivity and increase my brainpower,” DeChambeau said, in this fine profile from Golf Channel’s Ryan Lavner.

    Three-putt perfection

    And finally, we sign off with perhaps the best three-putt you will ever see. Well done to Kelly Mitchum, successfully making amatuers everywhere feel bad about their own touch on the greens.

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