​Nine years have passed since the Open Championship last graced Royal Birkdale, and with its return this year, it feels like the perfect moment to revisit what, for me, stands as the strangest and most spellbinding finish to a men’s major in my lifetime: Jordan Spieth in 2017. Specifically, the final round. And to be ultra-specific, the 13th hole. I revisited it last month, watching it again for the first time in years, and I found it even more surreal and intoxicating than I remembered. The magic eluded me in the chaos of the moment back then, but it has aged with a quiet, almost hypnotic grace, and I doubt I’ll ever get through a year without rewatching it again.
How best to commemorate it? If we borrow a line from Ty Webb, we should Be the ball. Let us all fantasize aloud about becoming the Jordan Spieth of a decade ago, letting the moment wash over us and shaping our own play through that same spirit. What follows are ten steps designed to guide you toward the pinnacle of the Spieth Experience. If you want a quick refresher, I’d start at the 2:32:20 mark of the final round on the R&A YouTube channel and watch straight through to the end. I’ve also leaned on a superb oral history of the 13th hole by Dave Shedloski and John Huggan that Golf Digest published a year after the event. It’s a compact treasure trove of the moment’s texture.
Step 1: Collapse at the Masters. There is no substitute for the stage-setting heartbreak that defines this chapter. At the peak of your powers, when the arc of your career seems poised to vault you into an elite stratosphere—when overtaking Rory McIlroy is within reach and Scottie Scheffler is still only a rising force—you, at twenty-three but already carrying the gravity of a much older soul, must orchestrate a collapse of your entire early legacy fifteen months before. You enter with a five-shot lead into the par-3 12th at Augusta National, knock it into the water twice, and endure the humiliation of handing the green jacket to a challenger who probably didn’t deserve it, watching as your aura folds in on itself and everyone wonders what will become of you.
Step 2: You must seem to erase those memories through three brilliant rounds at Birkdale. After that Masters collapse, you rebound with a win in 2016 and then add another triumph in 2017. Yet the pressure mounts, and when five majors pass without a top-10 finish, you begin to look fragile in the eyes of your supporters. Has the early-fire, unquenchable sparkle cooled? Is the flame gone? But when you step to the tee at Birkdale, all those doubts must retreat into the mist as you surge into a share of the lead after Thursday, seize it outright on Friday with a two-shot edge, and then outplay the course and your rivals with a Saturday 65, building a three-shot lead on Matt Kuchar and a six-shot cushion over the third spot (held by two others, for optimal search visibility). This is the moment you want to feel the legend reconstituting itself, one shot at a time.