Dave George: Channeling Arnie, Jordan Spieth has eyes on Masters prize

On the pine straw, in a pickle, Jordan Spieth needed to know Saturday if he should lay up short of the babbling, troubling creek that fronts the 13th green or press on toward something grander.

“What would Arnie do?” Spieth asked his caddie, but really, everybody already knows the answer to that one.

The late Arnold Palmer, missing from the Masters for the first time this year, always took the bold route, always looked to power-lift himself above the field at moments like these.

Spieth, only 23, never wants to leave Augusta National without trying to do the same, and he’s earned another shot at it on Sunday because of a third-round 68 that was as tough mentally as the King ever was physically.

That decision on No. 13, from a spot where an ancient pine tree obstructed the view of his target? Spieth pulled out a 4-iron and whaled away at the green, where the ball landed and rolled within 29 feet of the cup. An eagle would have been nicer than the two-putt birdie that resulted, but really, hasn’t the Texan’s charge at the leaders already been ridiculous enough?

Spieth shot a 75 on Thursday, with a quadruple-bogey 9 baked inside like a rotten egg in a cheap cake mix. Missed cuts are supposed to follow opening 75’s. Instead Spieth is taking dead aim at his second Masters title from a spot just two strokes behind co-leaders Justin Rose and Sergio Garcia, and he’s daring anybody to play as loose as he will in the final round.

“I’ve been on both sides of it now,” said Spieth, who lost a big fourth-round lead at the Masters last year by hitting two balls in the water for a quadruple-bogey 7 on No. 12, “and I like the winning side better. So I’m certainly going to go for broke tomorrow.

“Finishing fifth vs. 10th doesn’t mean much to me, so that frees me up a bit tomorrow.”

That’s the luxury that comes with having two major titles, both coming in 2015 at the Masters and the U.S. Open. Garcia, who never has won a major in 73 tries, is trying always to break through that wall and has the scars to show it. Likewise, Rickie Fowler, who is one stroke off the lead and thus stands between Spieth and the leaders, is another star looking to end the questions about when or if he’ll ever slam-dunk one of the Slams.

There’s more than that going on here, however. Spieth is that rare bird who wants to fly higher and faster than even makes sense, and if he crash-lands, so what? The kid survived his meltdown at Augusta National last year and still wants to play here, still expects to win, still acts as if there shouldn’t be a green-jacket ceremony without him either wearing the thing or at the very least slipping it on to somebody else.

How does a win and a couple of runnerup finishes sound for a player’s first three Masters trips, plus a chance to do it again in his fourth? To tell the truth, it sounds like the stretch of dominance that Arnie had here between 1958 and 1964, with three victories and a couple of top-three finishes in that stretch.

“(Friday’s) round was bigger than today’s,in my opinion,” Spieth said of the second-round 69 that knocked him clear of the cut line and lowered the 10-stroke gap between him and the lead from 10 shots to four. “I already knew I had a chance and we did what we needed to do today. Now, obviously, we just need one more day of it and probably a couple of breaks to go our way.”

Obviously? Winning the Masters with a record-tying score of 18-under-par 270 two years ago is the only thing that could unleash a word like that in this situation. Spieth opened that tournament with scores of 64 and 66, shaving 14 strokes off par in the kind of rapid order that Bobby Jones never imagined when this gem of a course was built. The unbelievably good and the unbearably bad, Spieth has lived it all on a Masters Sunday.

“It’s tough protecting a lead on this golf course,” said Spieth, “because it’s one where you need to play aggressive to win. Protecting the lead, you don’t want to play aggressive. So I know that if I am able to jump out into the lead, you have to keep the gas pedal down and pretend that you’re not.”

Rory McIlroy tried to walk that psychological tight-rope at the 2011 Masters and failed. Same thing happened to Greg Norman here. What would Arnie do? He would charge, headlong, into history. He would look at a leaderboard with only three names above his and figure to pass them by the end of the front nine, or at least to have them on their knees at Amen Corner. And if none of that worked out, well, he’d know that he was born to win at Augusta National, and that he’d be back to do it again.

Spieth sees the Masters in that same way. It’s a powerful potion, and he swallows it with the same smile you see on every loving black-and-white photo of Mr. Palmer that hangs in the Augusta National clubhouse.

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