Jordan Spieth’s ‘10-year’ breakthrough and Vijay Singh magic

Welcome! Where are you, you ask. I’m calling this the Weekend 9. Think of it as a spot to warm up for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We’ll have thoughts. We’ll have tips. We’ll have tweets. But just nine in all, though sometimes maybe more and sometimes maybe less. As for who I am? The paragraphs below tell some of the story. I can be reached at nick.piastowski@golf.com.

I listened to Drake’s “One Dance” yesterday.

And the Lumineers’ “Ophelia.” And the Weeknd’s “Starboy.” The earworms from a decade ago. The ones where after flipping on the car radio and hearing them, they found their way into your mundane chores. (Sing it with me now, grocery store shoppers: Oh, Ophelia, what aisle is the turkey meat?) 

I’d found the songs after hearing a few others as part of social media’s 2016 challenge, where folks have been sharing photos and such from the time. It’s cute. Me? Ten years ago, my wife and I were in Omaha — for 11 months. It was our funkiest year, by far. We quit jobs. Got hired at new ones. Sold a house. Sold two cars. Looked in the rearview mirror at the life and routine we knew. And on Dec. 30, two lifelong Midwesterners and two cats somehow found themselves in Brooklyn. Life happens like that sometimes. There was some plan. But mostly not. It was ready-shoot-aim. Just keep moving. 

Worlds away, Jordan Spieth was doing some of that, too. 

Remember him back then? He held pro golf in his palm like you would a golf ball. The year previous, he’d won the Masters, the U.S. Open and the Tour Championship, before following it up with two victories in 2016 and three in 2017. How many more majors could he win? Any number seemed doable. But zero was what he got. Hmm. A drought came. Injury. Searches. Questions, chief among being:

Would he ever return?

To a degree, he has. He’s won twice since 2021. He also feels he’s fully recovered from surgery on his troublesome left wrist. On Thursday, after he opened his ’26 season at the Sony Open, Spieth sounded optimistic. He thinks he can trust his swing. There’s more, though. He’s also been thinking some about the past 10 years. And the next 10 years. He’s been thinking about what he should have done. 

And what he wants to do moving forward. 

“Trying to enjoy myself more …” Spieth said. “It was a bit of a grind last couple years, and if I’m not having fun out here — I mean, I know 10 years from now I’m going to wish I had these 10 years back. I certainly wish I could go back 10 years.

“All in all, if you’re not having fun, what are you doing out here? All that together should really help.”

Should, meaning we’ll find out. But if you’re looking for real signs of rebirth from Spieth, and if you’re wanting to believe Spieth could be Spieth again, this is what you hope to hear.

To quote “One Dance”:

Baby, I like your style.

“I’m saying if you’re not being present,” Spieth said, “and you’re not enjoying the fact that you’re living out your dream and if it feels like a job and hard work and all that, and I tell you it has and it really shouldn’t. There’s no need.”

Let’s see if we can find eight more items for the Weekend 9. 

2. From the same interview, the video below was also good. 

3. This story here, from The Fried Egg’s Kevin Van Valkenburg, was also good. It’s about Spieth — and nostalgia. 

One takeaway for the weekend 

4. Vijay Singh didn’t just use a PGA Tour career-money exemption this year.

He’s cashing checks with it. The 62-year-old is at two-under through two rounds of the Sony Open, and he’ll play the weekend. 

And his Instagram account also posted this:

One takeaway from the week that was 

5. Brooks Koepka is heading back to the PGA Tour. And Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm and Camerson Smith aren’t — for now. OK. And OK. 

So when does the civil war end?

Will it?

Is Koepka’s move the one that squashes LIV? Or is this just like a free agent transaction, of which baseball has seen a few? (Apologies to anyone not bleeding Dodger blue.) 

I’m sure you have thoughts. To me, a pair of quotes this week are worth noting. On Wednesday, during a LIV season-preview event, LIV executive vice president of team business operations Katie O’Reilly said this, when asked when LIV’s 13 teams would start selling stakes:

“Our goal is to build 13 billion-dollar franchises. That is our goal. Are we there yet? No. But right now we are building the foundation for that.” (Front Office Sports’ David Rumsey wrote more about the subject, and you can read his story here.)

Then there’s Rory McIlroy’s thoughts on LIV following the Koepka news. He was interviewed at the DP World Tour’s Dubai Invitational by The Telegraph’s James Corrigan, and you can read his story here: 

“It’s not as if they made any huge signings this year, is it? They haven’t signed anyone who moves the needle and I don’t think they will. I mean, they could re-sign Bryson for hundreds of millions of dollars, but even if they do, it doesn’t change their product, does it? They’ll just be paying for the exact same thing. And they’ve lost Brooks, so they’ll be paying out all this money and …”   

Another takeaway from the week that was 

6. The video below is good. At this week’s Korn Ferry Tour’s Bahamas Golf Classic, Roger Sloan’s tournament went like this:

— Started as an alternate 

— Moved into the field as players withdrew, including Noah Goodwin

— Arrived in the Bahamas a day before the tournament, but the tournament hotel was booked and he had no caddie  

— Got a message from his regular caddie saying, “Hey, I got a guy” — and that guy could caddie and had a room 

— Wait, why was Goodwin singled out a few lines above? Because the “guy” who could help out was Goodwin’s dad, Jeff 

— Sloan finished runner-up 

A golf story that interests me 

7. The video below, starting at the 22-second mark, was good. It’s golf. It’s college football. It’s Nick Saban.