spieth-angry

Jordan Spieth hasn’t been very Jordan Spiethy lately. He finished outside the top-20 at the Pebble Beach Pro-Am, missed the cut at the Northern Trust Open, and finished tied-17th at last week’s WGC-Cadillac Championship, only registering one round in the 60s. It’s a long way from being a disaster – it’s not even a slump – but the world number one would have been in a better mood had he not started this week’s Valspar Championship with a five-over 76 that left him tied for 117th and needing a strong second round to escape a second missed cut in the space of three weeks. 

Spieth has one of the best temperaments in golf, and shrugged it off as one of those days. “What good is kicking the door, other than hurting my foot and having to withdraw?” he joked. “I’m kidding. No, I’ll be fine.”

And that’s when the trouble started. 

The PGA Tour ran the interview on their website, tweeting a link to the story that took Spieth’s quote out of context. Spieth wasn’t best pleased. 

The PGA Tour promptly deleted the tweet, although the article remains live. 

Spieth, who has never withdrawn from an event, clearly took exception to his words of jest being used to suggest that it had crossed his mind. 

That wasn’t the end of the social media misery for Spieth. When an Instagram user said, “IF HIS PUTTER IS NOT WORKING, HES GARBAGE. Every other aspect of his game is very average,” Spieth felt compelled to respond: “Couldn’t be further from the truth troll. Go do research before hating.”

The Instagram troll then backtracked somewhat, saying, “exaggerated when i said you were complete “garbage”, obviously not the case. Honestly, you’re far from leading the tour in distance & proximity to the hole. Without a hot putter, theres no way possible you can dominate like you did last year.”

Spieth recently announced that he was going to back away from social media, saying, “I struggle a bit with social media. Trying to quiet the noise there. I’ve just gone away from looking at any comments on Instagram, Twitter. People just want to say stuff just to say stuff.”

Do you think Spieth was right to bite back, or should he bite his tongue?