What Went Wrong for Jordan Spieth at the Masters

This one's gonna leave a mark.

Jordan Spieth, with two major championships already to his credit at age 22, had just limped off the back nine at Augusta National on Sunday when he was compelled to put his day in perspective.

No medical salve, psychological band-aid, or well-intended platitude could help with this particular wound. It more than stung—it crushed him. Get over it? Not likely anytime soon.

"It will take a while," Spieth said.

Conversely, it didn't take long at all for the world No. 2 to throw away two big leads on the weekend at the Masters, low-lighted by a spectacular splashdown in the final round that was the talk around water coolers in offices around the world on Monday.

Fitting, since water cooled any chance of him winning the day before. Spieth held a five-shot lead with nine holes to play on Sunday when the inconsistencies that had dogged him all week reappeared at the worst possible time. A day earlier, he held a four-shot lead with 20 holes to play, and seemingly was well on his way to becoming the fourth player in Masters history to win the title in consecutive years. Then he hit two wilds shots off the tees at Nos. 17 and 18 and dropped three shots.

Truth be told, when he dunked two balls in a row into the creek at No. 12 on Sunday, the most famous par-3 hole in the world, should anybody truly have been shocked? He'd been keeping himself atop the leaderboard all week based almost solely on his wizardry with the putter. His 112 putts ranked second in the field.

The other 13 clubs? Pretty average at best.

I don't want to hear another word about strokes gain tee to green being more important than strokes gained putting. WOW!

— Arron Oberholser (@ArronOberholser)April 10, 2016

By early Saturday, Spieth might have been on top of the board, but it was obvious he wasn't on top of his game. This observation wasn't exactly a revelation (a shade clairvoyant, maybe):

Spieth has sprayed it into the trees twice, and the grandstands once, and it hasn't cost him -- yet. Tick, tock, tick, tock.

— Steve Elling (@EllingYelling)April 9, 2016

He hit eight fairways on Saturday and 21 greens all weekend. Speith, a fairly low-maintenance guy as far as contemporary players go, flew swing coach Cameron McCormackback into town from Texas on Saturday night, which in retrospect seems like a huge red flag.

"I think he felt that just his voice would bring my confidence back into my swing, and it certainly did," Spieth said Sunday night.

It was the timing of Sunday's shipwreck that was the true stunner, just as it was on the last two holes on Saturday night. After making four birdies in a row Sunday to seemingly seize command over a group of pursuers with minimal past major-championship success, Spieth bogeyed Nos. 10 and 11, and then knocked his tee shot on the 12th—the shortest hole on the property at 155 yards—into the water.

Those with strong memories will recall that he flushed the tournament at the same spot two years earlier, when he was right in the mix and splashed his tee shot in the creek on the 12th to cripple his chances.

"That hole, for whatever reason, just has people's number," Spieth said. His, especially.

Worse, the second shot that Spieth drowned in the final round was the stuff of nightmares and embarrassment. From the drop zone on the 12th, he fatted a wedge into the water and was reaching for another ball from caddie Michael Greller almost before it fell from the sky, 20 yards short of dry land. He wrote down a seven—a game-ending quadruple-bogey.

From exaltation to exasperation, in two lousy swings. On a day when crowd roars for eagles, birdies, and aces had finally energized the back nine after a week of tough scoring conditions, the gasps when Spieth bathed two shots on the 12th were darned likely heard in Atlanta.

True enough, Spieth himself has benefited from similar benevolence of the golf gods in the past. Last June, he watched from the clubhouse as Dustin Johnson three-putted the final hole of the U.S. Open to hand him the title, his second major in succession. This time, Spieth paid it forward. Danny Willett kept his head long enough to unwrap Spieth's gift afterward: the club's trademark green jacket.

Maybe in the final analysis, Spieth will recognize that it was a near-miracle that he was leading into the tournament's final stretch to begin with. He found fewer than 60 percent of his fairways and 68 percent of the greens in regulation for the week. He had four holes where he finished with a double-bogey or worse.

Moreover, in three trips to Augusta, he's finished second, first, and second—leading on Sunday in all three years—which is a notable achievement, however the final chapter played out. He's finished no worse than T4 in the past five majors, representing an insane stretch of sustained, mostly memorable play.

Still, as far as context, he struggled to consider the Grand Slam scheme of things. The wounds from Sunday afternoon were still oozing.

"Big picture," he said, "this one will hurt."