Smashing Records, A 21-Year-Old Breaks Through at the Masters

The University of Texas men's golf team played in a competition in California this weekend without Jordan Spieth, who helped the Longhorns win the national title three years ago as a freshman.

In a different era, Spieth would have been winding down his senior year, perhaps with a shot at the individual NCAA crown. But in this warp-speed world of golf, in which the top-ranked woman is 17 years old and three of the top five men in the new world rankings will be under 28, Spieth's talent placed him on an accelerated track. (Tiger Woods finds Cause for Hope Amid Bumps, Pain and Young Upstarts)

Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods, Justin Rose and top-ranked Rory McIlroy, who have a combined 24 major championships, all tried, but no one could catch the 21-year-old Spieth at the Masters on Sunday. Spieth closed with a two-under-par 70 to win his first major in clarion-call fashion, with a 72-hole score of 18-under 270 that matched the mark Woods set in 1997 on his way to his first major title, also at age 21. (Anirban Lahiri finishes joint-49th at Augusta Masters)

Spieth, who had already broken the 36-hole and 54-hole tournament records, became the first player to get to 19 under in the history of the Masters - first played in 1934 - with a birdie on the par-5 15th. Earlier, at the 10th hole, Spieth recorded his 26th birdie to break a tournament record set in 2001 by Mickelson; he finished with 28.

Before he joined the elite ranks of green jacket holders by holding off Mickelson and Rose - who finished tied for second, four shots back, after rounds of 69 and 70 - Spieth won over people with his grounded personality.

He made a lasting impression on Clair Peterson, the tournament director for the John Deere Classic, an event traditionally held the week before the British Open. Peterson gave Spieth a sponsor's exemption to the event in 2012, when he was an amateur. A year later, Spieth returned without full playing status on the PGA Tour and won for the first time as a professional to secure his tour membership.

That tournament's media day, a time set aside for the defending champion to return for interviews, was held last year on the Monday after a stretch in which Spieth had played in four consecutive tournaments. Peterson said he was prepared for an exhausted Spieth to beg out of it, as has happened on occasion at his and other tournaments, and conduct the interviews by phone instead. But Spieth showed up and stayed for the day.

"Not only was he gracious, we had a pretty rigorous schedule for him," Peterson said in a telephone interview.

He added: "Jordan is such a gentleman. He's someone who remembers those who have helped him along the way."

Spieth was thrilled, Peterson said, when he was presented with a bobblehead doll made from his likeness.

"He made a point of saying his sister would be so excited about it," Peterson said, adding: "He's mature beyond his years on the course, but off it he's so kidlike. He hasn't lost that."

Spieth wears baseball caps, sometimes with the brim pointed backward. He calls any man over the age of 30 "sir" and brings back trinkets from his travels for his younger sister.

On the golf course, though, this polite young man morphs into a merciless competitor, with a gaze that his mentor, Ben Crenshaw, described as "like looking at Wyatt Earp."

Spieth, who was younger than four of the seven amateurs in this year's Masters field, displayed some of that steeliness in becoming the first wire-to-wire winner at the event since Raymond Floyd in 1976 and the fifth overall. The others include two of the game's greats, Arnold Palmer (1960) and Jack Nicklaus (1972).

Spieth is a composite of several of the best golfers the United States has produced; like the smartphone he stuffs in his back pocket when he is practicing, he carries the best attributes of the earlier models. He burns with Woods' intensity on the course, but off it, he has an affability, an easy accessibility, that calls to mind Mickelson or Crenshaw, a fellow Texan whose Masters farewell, after 44 starts and two victories, coincided with Spieth's coronation.

Summoning the ghosts of Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson, the World Golf Hall of Fame writer Dan Jenkins, another Texan, described Spieth as having "the focus and will of Hogan, the likability of Nelson and the putting stroke of Crenshaw."

Before the torch was passed from Crenshaw to Spieth at Augusta National Golf Club, another symbolic changing of the guard occurred in February when Spieth signed an endorsement contract with AT&T, which built a corporate relationship with Woods after he turned pro in 1996. And in the same way that Woods was enlisted to launch Nike's entry into golf, Spieth has been the head-to-foot soldier for Under Armour's mounted charge into the sport.

It is heady stuff for Spieth, a Dallas native who is the oldest of the three children of Christine, who played Division III college basketball, and Shawn, who played baseball in college.

The middle child, Steven, plays basketball at Brown, and the youngest, Ellie, is 14 with the mental capacity of a 5-year-old. Born with an undiagnosed neurological disorder, she is the "heart and soul" of the family, said the Longhorns' golf coach, John Fields.

"Everyone has seen Jordan's compassion and love for his sister, Ellie," Fields said in a telephone interview from California. "There's love and acceptance and mainstreaming. There's no hiding it, no embarrassment about it."

Spieth lights up when he talks about his sister's singular sense of humor and how hanging around her keeps him grounded.

Since 1940, only two other players, Woods and the Spaniard Sergio Garcia, have won three PGA Tour titles before turning 22. Spieth's birthday is July 27, and given his form, no one would blink if he were to collect three more victories between now and then to match Woods, who had six titles before he was 22.

"Honestly, I don't look at this as a run," Spieth said recently. "I look at this as, this is the way I should be playing. If I look at it as a run, it means the normal me is something lesser than I am right now."

Spieth knows people are describing him as the Next Big Thing in golf, but like a climber scaling Mount Everest, he does not look beyond the next step.

Sometimes, Spieth acknowledged, he is so focused on the task at hand that he does not take time to soak in what he has accomplished. But that was not the case at the Masters, Spieth's caddie, Michael Greller, said before the victory. During their rounds, Greller said, they took the time to smell the azaleas, to drink in the scene.

"We talked about the ovations," he said, adding that Spieth believed his game was worthy of applause even if he was too much of a gentleman to acknowledge it.

"He believes he's truly one of the best in the world and that this isn't a fluke," Greller said. "This isn't like, wow, you should be at Texas playing. He believes he should be in this moment."

© The New York Times 2015