Jordan Spieth knows the question is coming. Every year, when the golf world turns its attention to the season's second major, the whispers grow louder. For a decade now, one trophy has eluded him—the PGA Championship—and it stands as the final piece of a career Grand Slam that would cement his place among the sport's immortals.
It wasn't always this way. Back in 2015, Spieth was unstoppable. He captured the Masters and U.S. Open in a brilliant stretch, then came within a mere three strokes of winning both the Open Championship and PGA Championship—a feat that would have made him the first player in modern history to complete a single-season Grand Slam. The golf world was his. When he added a miraculous Open Championship victory in 2017, collecting the career Grand Slam seemed like a formality.
"Obviously, with having won the other three, that's the one that everyone focuses on," Spieth said Monday at Aronimink, ahead of his latest PGA Championship attempt.
During that golden era, Spieth was chasing history alongside legends like Rory McIlroy and Phil Mickelson, both also hunting for their fourth major. For a fleeting moment, it looked like the young Texan would get there first. But the PGA Championship slipped away in 2017, then again in 2018 and 2019. The 2020s arrived, and with them, a frustrating drought. His best finish since? A T3 in 2019, though he was still six strokes behind a dominant Brooks Koepka at Bethpage. Since that 2017 Open win, Spieth has claimed just two tournaments of any kind, and in the 2020s, he hasn't finished better than T29 at the PGA.
"I went on a run of feeling like I was contending, or having a good chance of contending, at every major for a number of years," Spieth reflected. "And then it was periodic, and I feel like I'm close to being able to go back to doing that again. I just want to give myself a chance."
This week, with the PGA Championship on the line and his career Grand Slam still dangling just out of reach, Spieth might be closer than he thinks. For fans who remember his brilliance, the question isn't just whether he'll win—it's whether he can recapture the magic that once made him the king of golf. And for those watching in their favorite golf gear, there's no better time to believe in a comeback.