ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — The soundtrack to Jordan Spieth’s final practice round before Thursday’s start of the British Open featured raindrops falling on umbrellas and cameras clicking on his backswing.
One noise was welcome; the other was not. At Spieth’s behest, Michael Greller, his caddie, asked the scrum of photographers at the fourth tee Wednesday afternoon to refrain from taking pictures in the middle of Spieth’s swing.
Spieth then stepped up and hit his ball to a chorus of clicks. As soon as he lifted his head on his follow-through, he asked Greller with a rueful laugh, “How’d that work out?”
With Rory McIlroy, the reigning champion and world No. 1 from Northern Ireland, sidelined with a sprained left ankle, the spotlight this week at the Old Course falls directly on Spieth, the winner of the year’s first two majors.
Spectators want a glimpse of him, fans want an autograph, photographers want candid shots, reporters want sound bites and everyone wants to know if Spieth can keep alive his quest to become the first player in the modern era to win all four majors in the same calendar year.
Since arriving here Monday from the United States, fresh off his playoff victory at the John Deere Classic, Spieth has come across as oblivious to the sensation caused by his results. He has 13 top-10 finishes, including six wins, in his past 19 starts dating back to Nov. 30.
Before Spieth’s turn came to speak Wednesday, others weighed in on his tee times, his strategy and his prospects for winning a third consecutive major. He was gently criticized for not traveling here to compete in the Scottish Open or squeeze in extra practices on the Old Course, which he had played once before this week. He was breezily advised to play practice rounds with veterans of the tournament, the better to pick their brains about the course’s quirks. He was amiably informed that his starting wave figures to get the worst of the week’s foulest weather and that, basically, he has not seen anything yet, weather-wise.
Spieth, 21, made plain that all the background noise has not escaped him. He offered rejoinders in a manner so mild and so respectful, his targets might not have been aware his answers were about them.
Spieth addressed the concerns expressed by Paul McGinley, last year’s victorious Ryder Cup captain, during last week’s Scottish Open. Echoing others, McGinley told a group of reporters: “I’m full of admiration for his sense of loyalty to sponsors who have been good to him in the past, but at the same time, if you want to be really ruthless, I believe you should, like tennis players, be practicing on the same surface you play in the major. He’s not putting the odds in his favor, put it that way.”
The idea behind playing in the United States before heading here, Spieth said, “was to try and feel pressure over the weekend and try and perform my best, see what tendencies I got into that we could adjust for major championship pressure, and that’s exactly what we did.”
He added: “I just liked the fact that I could go somewhere where I could play hard and possibly win a PGA Tour event in preparation. But certainly more time on this golf course couldn’t ever hurt anybody.”
Spieth played 46 holes during the past three days on the Old Course, 17 fewer than he played at Chambers Bay before the start of the U.S. Open.
“I still got a lot of holes in,” Spieth said, “and I feel really good about last week heading into here and over the past couple months heading into here.”
It is not as if Spieth has never been in this position before, jet-lagged and playing on a course with which he is not well versed. On the final day of November, he closed with a 63 on a tough course in high winds to win the Australian Open by six strokes. He traveled from Sydney to Orlando, Florida, with a quick stopover in Dallas, and days later sealed a 10-stroke victory over Henrik Stenson, a pre-tournament favorite this week, at the Hero World Challenge, an unofficial event hosted by Tiger Woods.
“I think I can draw back on Tiger’s event because it was a shortened week, it was a place I had played, but I hadn’t played in quite a while, and I was bringing great feels from the week before,” Spieth said.
Woods, the winner of two British Opens at the Old Course, espoused the wisdom of playing practice rounds with experienced players who have seen the wind blow in every direction here and know which shot to pull out of their bags for every conceivable situation.
“That’s one of the things I’ve noticed over the years that I’ve played here is that it does help playing practice rounds with, for me, some of the older players and getting their experience at how do you hit shots, where do you aim here?” Woods said.