SAN ANTONIO, Texas -- With only two players among the top 50 of the World Ranking here this week, the Valero Texas Open is pretty much the Texas Wide Open. Anyone could win on a difficult TPC San Antonio layout, and that anyone could well be 18-year-old amateur Jordan Spieth, a freshman just an hour up the road at the University of Texas in Austin.
Spieth, who will be playing his fifth PGA Tour event, has two victories and two runner-up finishes among his seven top-six efforts for the Longhorns this season. And he says his game has grown because of the quality of the competition and the difficulty of the courses in college golf compared to high school, as well as from the fact he's been able to work on his game more.
"I have a lot more time to practice than I did in high school," a composed and thoughtful Spieth said Wednesday at the Valero. "We get out of classes at 12:30 and I have the rest of the day to practice, which is nice, versus in high school, I was there at 3 p.m. and [then] out on the course."
Spieth, who finished T-16 at the 2010 HP Byron Nelson Classic at the age of 16, was only three strokes off the lead last year going into the final round of the Nelson at TPC Four Seasons in Los Colinas, near his Dallas-area home, but closed with a 77 to finish T-32. Earlier this year he missed the cut by two strokes at the Northern Trust Open at Riviera after double bogeying his final hole.