Ogilvy: Spieth well on his way to greatness

Jordan Spieth's 2015 season was one of the best in recent times, but any discussions about greatness will have to wait.

EXCLUSIVE BY GOLF AUSTRALIA COLUMNIST GEOFF OGILVY

When I first started competing on the PGA Tour, one of the things that surprised me was how important the “Player of the Year” award was to both the pros and the media. I could never quite get my head round it. We are all out there trying to win tournaments and that was really it as far as I was concerned.

After a while, though, I began to appreciate the merit of the award, especially the fact that it is voted for by the players and nobody else. When that is the case, it means more. Listening to the media all year, you can end up with a distorted reality. It is the golfers who know best who has played the best in a given year.

Having said that, the guys on Tour can be swayed too. Take this year. Until Jordan Spieth put an end to any debate by winning the Tour Championship and the FedEx Cup, there were two obvious candidates: Jordan and Jason Day. For each individual PGA Tour player, it would have been easy to lean one way or the other based solely on how each man played alongside them – or if they happened to play in more tournaments alongside Jordan rather than Jason. That can sway anyone.

I have direct experience of that feeling. Back in the early ‘noughties’, I can remember being paired with Tiger Woods in tournaments. He performed so outstandingly well, I would be tempted to vote for him even if someone else won more often than he did in that year. I’d never seen anything like him back then. No one could possibly play better. So he had to be player of the year.

For most of my career, in fact, this whole thing has been basically a ‘non-decision’. At least 60 percent of the time, it has clearly been Tiger. There were a couple of seasons when it was obviously Vijay Singh. And I think both Phil Mickelson and Padraig Harrington had years that were particularly outstanding.

For long enough, though, this year was actually interesting. Walking away from the US Open at Chambers Bay in June, the vote would clearly have been 100 percent in favour of Jordan. Nothing anyone could possibly do for the rest of the year could change that.

A month later, after the Open at St Andrews, Jordan’s supremacy was unchanged. He’d won the first two majors of the year and missed the play-off for the third by a shot, even with all the attention and stress heaped on him that week. It’s hard to imagine how he must have been feeling standing on the first tee at the Old Course that week. The whole world was watching him. Ridiculous.

There is a massive mentality in golf – one that is fair to an extent – that all opportunities to be part of the player of the year discussion are over at the end of the US PGA Championship. That’s the way I see it, anyway. The FedEx Cup is an amazing thing and is great for the players. But if you asked me at the beginning of a season if I would rather win five tournaments and the FedEx Cup than one major, I’d take the major.

Which is why I have always voted based on whose year I would be happier with. And that, even before Jordan did win the FedEx, was why I was already going to vote for him and not Jason. If you asked Jason whose year he would rather have, his own or Jordan’s, he is definitely going to place himself second, which is not to say he should not be very proud of what he has achieved. He has played amazingly well.

Jason Day and Jordan Spieth ruled the golf season.

Another indication of just how great Jason has been is that third place this year is miles behind second. Rickie Fowler is probably the bronze-medallist with three big wins around the world: the Players, the Scottish Open and the Deutsche Bank Championship. But no one is saying he even comes close to Jason, never mind Jordan.

Then again, I am sure that – again before the Tour Championship – there were those on the PGA Tour leaning towards Jason, especially if he had won in Atlanta. But in my experience, the better the player, the more he is likely to lean towards picking the guy who wins the most majors. A guy who has just arrived on Tour and has maybe not won a tournament is more likely to go the other way. For him, more wins and more money might trump historical significance.

I would disagree with that, of course. The majors are the hardest events to win and so assume more lasting significance. What if a guy played 30 tournaments, missed 26 cuts but won all four majors. He’s player of the year, right? Or let’s say he missed 28 cuts and won two majors. He’s still my player of the year if no one else won two majors.

No one talks about the number of wins, say, Jim Furyk has on Tour. But almost everyone knows he won the US Open in 2003. At least until you pile up maybe 30 tournament wins, it’s all about majors. History will look back and say Adam Scott won the Masters – and hopefully more majors – not that he won however many PGA Tour events, or $40 million.

Another nod for Jordan has been his consistency. Outside Tiger, I don’t think we’ve seen someone who can contend as regularly as he has done – even when he is seemingly not playing well. Like Tiger, he has the ability to appear grumpy with his game and hit a lot of so-so shots, yet still have a chance to win at the end of the week.

To me, that was the most impressive thing about Tiger. Regardless of the game he brought with him, he could find a way to be in the mix come Sunday. He did that for ten years and Jordan has become that same guy at the moment. Getting into contention, of course, is the fun part of competitive golf. Winning is the bonus. The true fun is the back nine on Sunday. I’m never jealous of the guy who wins, but I am envious of the guys who have a chance.

By that measure, Jordan is the guy having the most fun right now. Jason has been close recently too. He has been a machine for the past few months. And I do think his ‘physical’ game is better than Jordan’s. Physically, not many people have ever played golf like he has done in 2015.

I left the US Open this year thinking I could beat Jordan in a given week. But when I came away from Whistling Straits, I couldn’t see any way I could have beaten Jason that week. It’s a tough choice, but if I could pick a golf game to have I’d pick Jason’s – and if I could pick a year to have, I’d pick Jordan’s.

But here’s the thing. Jordan has achieved all he has done this year with a terrific mix of wisdom and guile. He seems to have some innate understanding that all you have to do is be one shot better than anyone else at the end. Where Jason plays ‘perfect’ golf, Jordan plays to win. And how you achieve that doesn’t really matter.

That sort of thing is the difference between ‘very good’ and ‘great’. These days, good technique, straight hitting and good putting are relatively easy. Not easy, but relatively easy. There is so much science available today to make you better, as opposed to back in the day when wise old coaches were guessing, really. So getting people to a certain level is a lot more doable than it used to be.

All of which underlines my point. To a large degree what has separated Jordan from the rest this year is his golf wisdom. The truly great ones have it all. And this year, Jordan has had a truly great year, one of the top-dozen of all-time, which is not to say he is deserving of the “great” label just yet. That is defined over a longer period. But he’s well on the way.