Jordan Spieth was standing over his ball on the 10th tee at T.P.C. Sawgrass when Rickie Fowler fished a bottle of water from a cooler and tossed it over Spieth’s head to Justin Thomas on the opposite side of the tee box. Spieth did not flinch.
After a four-week break from competitive golf, Spieth appeared to be in midtournament form Tuesday during a practice round ahead of this week’s Players Championship.
For his first 18-hole round in front of a paying public since his meltdown on the Sunday of the Masters last month, Spieth assembled the same group that had helped him shake off that closing 73.
Two weeks after he surrendered a five-stroke lead on the back nine at Augusta National Golf Club to finish the Masters tied for second, Spieth took a vacation in the Bahamas. He was accompanied by Fowler, Thomas and Smylie Kaufman, who reunited with him Tuesday for a low-key practice round.
The Bahamas trip, organized a month in advance of the Masters, was just what the sports psychologist would have ordered. Each player arrived with unwanted baggage from Augusta National. Kaufman had carded a final-round 81 while paired with Spieth, Fowler had missed the cut after an opening 80, and Thomas had not broken par until the final round.
It’s almost like a new year starting this week
Spieth’s collapse included bogeys on Nos. 10 and 11 and two balls in the water on the par-3 12th, leading to a quadruple-bogey 7. Buried in the carnage from that stretch was the fact that Spieth rebounded with birdies on two of his next three holes. He gave himself a shot at an improbable comeback victory in defense of his title, but he ran out of holes to catch Danny Willett, who won by three.
On a teleconference call last week, the NBC analyst Johnny Miller said the 2016 Masters was going to haunt Spieth “for a long time.” On Wednesday, Spieth sounded as if he begged to differ.
Speaking at a pretournament news conference, Spieth said he had already put the Masters behind him.
“After a month off, it felt like a bit of an off-season,” he said, “so it’s almost like a new year starting this week.”
He said he was not bothered by the water hazards on several holes of the Stadium Course, including the 17th, with its island green, which affords ample cause for sweat-inducing flashbacks to Augusta National.
“I’ll just tell you that I’m not affected by it,” Spieth said. Referring to this week, he added, “I mean, if I hit a good shot and it catches a gust and goes in the water, it’s not because of the Masters.”
Like wheat from the chaff, Spieth separated the last six holes of his final back nine at the Masters from the first three when dissecting his round. From the 13th hole on, he said, “there was a lot of pressure there with a lot of tough shots, and we pulled them off.”
He added: “Not sure how it’ll feel if I work into contention again. I imagine thoughts won’t come up because it was just one bad hole.”