‘You can’t talk about them here’

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Jordan Spieth hasn’t been wild about his form in this 89th Masters.

For one, he’s been struggling to find a go-to driver after cracking his gamer at Pebble Beach in February. Since then, Spieth said, he has experimented with five different clubs. “I was in one that had the lefts the first day,” Spieth said of his first round at Augusta National when he shot a one-over 73, “so then I went back to another one.”

That driver, he said, has been far more cooperative. On Friday, he shot another 73 before carding a three-birdie 69 in his third round Saturday to move to one under for the tournament.

Despite his driver uncertainty, Spieth said another part of his game that has most been failing him and for a specific reason that has nothing to do with his swing plane or angle of attack.   

“My iron play killed me the last two days…” Spieth said Saturday afternoon.

But he didn’t stop there.

“…and to be brutally honest with you, it was primarily mud balls.”

Spieth continued: “It’s just so frustrating because you can’t talk about them here. You’re not supposed to talk about them. Mud balls can affect this tournament significantly, especially when you get them a lot on 11 and 13. They’re just daggers on those two holes.”

Thing is, Spieth was more than willing to talk about his mud-caked balls. In fact, he clearly wanted to talk about them.  

“They’ve done a better job,” Spieth said of how Augusta National has prepared the course to combat balls gathering mud. “There’s like less than normal, but I still had them today on those holes, too. I had them yesterday on those holes. It’s something to pay attention to for sure for leader groups, because you just have to play so far away from trouble or lay up when you’d normally go for it, just random stuff, because it will affect it significantly. And if you’re on the wrong side of the hole you’re either in the water or you almost can’t make par depending on what hole it is.

The course isn’t wet but it took on rain Thursday night into Friday, which surely accounts for some of the clumping Spieth has encountered. Spieth also noted that the direction the fairways are mowed — toward the tees — means tee balls are susceptible to “digging” into the turf. “A lot of times you have it on 75 percent of your drives,” he said. “You’ll get them on 13 and 15 a lot, and it’s like, all right, well, here we go.”

Asked why some players get more mud balls than others, Spieth said, “I think it’s just kind of random. Obviously the lower you hit it, the less chance. Every person is having to deal with it, but the fact that you’re not supposed to talk about it is a bit frustrating because it is a difference-maker. It can be a difference-maker in scores on some holes.

Spieth said he confronted one particularly dastardly mud ball on after his tee shot on 13. The mud was adhered to the left side of his orb, he said, which make the ball go right. “But then you’re on the slope that makes it go left, so I just played it flat,” he said. “I just said, ‘I’m going to hit a hard hybrid here and play a draw off this sleep, and I almost overcommitted, if anything, and if it goes left of the green, deal with it. You obviously can’t miss right of the green there.”

Spieth executed what he called his “best swing of the day,” a pin-seeker that landed in the middle of the green and scooted past the back-right hole location into the back bunker. From there, he got up-and-down for his third and final bogey of the day.   

Despite his insistence that mud balls are a taboo subject to raise at the Masters, Spieth is not the first player to broach the topic. In the opening round in 2022, two-time Masters winner Bubba Watson followed his second shot at 13 by hollering, “Mud! Are you kidding me?!” Moments later, his ball disappeared into the azaleas.

At the 2020 Masters, which was played in Novemeber on account of Covid, mud balls also became a talking point.

Rickie Fowler said that on the tightly mowed fairways he picked up roughly half-a-dozen mudballs per round.

“Actually, I mentioned it to [playing partner Danny Willett] yesterday when we were on 11,” Fowler said. “He had just missed the fairway right, into the first cut, and chipped a 6- or 7-iron down there to the middle of the green. I was in the middle of the fairway with a mud ball and had to aim over at 12 tee, and I still almost hit it in the water. So I feel like it’s almost harder to pick up mud balls in that first cut. In some situations, you’d almost rather that, or you wouldn’t mind it.”

As of this writing, Spieth was nine back of leader Rory McIlroy. He’ll be glad to hear no rain is in the forecast for the weekend.