Jordan Spieth sensed trouble after Jason Day sank his second birdie putt Sunday, on hole No. 5.
“He’s on today, so we’ve got to push,” Spieth told caddie Michael Greller en route to the sixth tee box.
Dallas’ Spieth, trying to win his third major championship of 2015, pushed all afternoon at Whistling Straits, but Day never faltered. The Australian won the 97th PGA Championship by three shots over runner-up Spieth.
Spieth, 22, joined the gallery in applauding Day, 27, and walked off the 18th green with quite a consolation prize. Just 71 tournaments into his pro career, he became the world’s No. 1 ranked golfer, supplanting Rory McIlroy, who finished 17th here.
“This is as easy a loss as I’ve ever had because I felt that I not only couldn’t do much about it, as the round went on, I also accomplished one of my lifelong goals,” Spieth said. “That will never be taken away from me now. I’ll always be a No. 1 player in the world.”
Having won the Masters in April and the U.S. Open in June and tying for fourth in July’s British Open, Spieth was attempting to join Tiger Woods (2000) and Fort Worth’s Ben Hogan (1953) as the only male golfers to win three professional majors in a calendar year.
A victory Sunday also would have made Spieth the first player to win all three United States-based majors in a calendar year.
Instead, Spieth’s 1-1-4-2 major tournament finishes, for an aggregate of 8, ties Woods’ 2000 and 2005 aggregates as the lowest in history among golfers who played all four majors. Hogan won all three of the majors he entered in 1953.
Spieth’s combined 54-under-par score in the majors is the lowest in history, breaking by one shot the record Woods set in 2000.
If it feels excruciating to Spieth to falling one shot short of a playoff at St. Andrews and three shots shy of a player, Day, who set a major tournament record for most strokes under par, it didn’t show on Spieth’s face or in his voice Sunday.
“It’s amazing to think about,” he said. “You can look at it two different ways, I think. You can look at it as four shots shy of the Grand Slam — from a negative view of what I could have done — or you could look at it where maybe one putt and I wouldn’t had one major this year.”
Spieth won the Masters by four shots, but in the U.S. Open Dustin Johnson had a 12-foot eagle putt on the 72nd hole that could have won it. Instead, he three-putted.
Spieth’s poise under pressure all year and graciousness in defeat Sunday make it difficult to fathom that this is only his third full PGA Tour season.