DALLAS — Jordan Spieth was in Colorado last week, just like he expected, only he wasn't there for the FedEx Cup playoffs. He had surgery on his left wrist that he believes will eliminate issues that might have bothered him longer than just the last 15 months.
Spieth had surgery on Aug. 21 in Vail — about 100 miles from the BMW Championship — to rebuild the sheath that holds in place the tendon connecting the forearm to the wrist.
He said doctors also scoped his wrist and found bone chips that were removed. They also cleaned up the triangular fibrocartilage complex that stabilizes the wrist and smoothed a bone.
“I feel relief in making the decision and confident that this will solve the problems I was having,” Spieth said. "It’s always one of those where we won’t know until a few months in, as we get strength back, how quickly it will feel normal.
“But I do feel relief and confidence in not experiencing what I went through this year.”
He expects recovery to take about three months. Spieth is wearing a cast from the middle of his palm to the middle of his bicep, presenting another challenge. He is left-handed (except for golf) and used to doing simple tasks with his left hand.
Spieth managed to finish in the top 70 and qualify for the PGA Tour postseason, though he didn't come close to advancing to the second stage of the FedEx Cup playoffs, which he missed for only the second time in his career.
The three-time major champion started 2023 with five finishes in the top six before he first injured his wrist in early May and had to withdraw the next week from the AT&T Byron Nelson in his hometown of Dallas.
He tried treating it with rehab and occasional rest, but it reached a point this year when the extensor carpi ulnaris tendon, or ECU, would pop out of the sheath.
Spieth was 13th in the key driving statistic, but a shockingly low 131st in approach to the green. He had a simple explanation for that when he left the TPC Southwind two weeks ago: "Anything that impacted the ground was not a good scenario for me this year,” he said.
“The closer I got to the green, the worse off I was,” he said Friday evening. “It was unexplainable.”
He said the surgery took a little longer than the expected — one hour, 15 minutes — though doctors told him what they found explained some of the pain he was experiencing.
“It was weird because I wasn't in pain swinging, but ... then it got to where it couldn't be coincidental,” he said. “There was some mechanical stuff I was trying to do, like holding my forearm in a pronated state. That was the biggest struggle.”
Lately, it had been a case of not knowing when the tendon might come out of the sheath. Spieth recalled one moment late in the third round of the British Open at Royal Troon, when he was holding a putter and a big gust of wind was enough to pop out the tendon.
He was on the 17th green and facing the tough closing hole. He figured he would have to open the face and hit two power slices just to finish. He got it back in the sheath before teeing off, but it became clear “it didn't seem sustainable.”
The surgery also led him to believe problems with his left hand had been brewing for some time. Spieth, the southpaw, said he hasn't thrown a baseball or played basketball for several years.
He had a bone spur at the top of his middle finger on his left hand in 2021 and said he had cortisone shots in his wrist before the British Open, where he finished runner-up to Collin Morikawa. He also said he had a hard time turning his left forearm properly in 2018 without pain. That led to what he called “a ton of compensation.”
Spieth won his third major in 2017 at the British Open. He then went nearly four years without winning, and almost dipped out of the top 100 in the world, before slowly regaining his form.
He reached No. 10 in the world in May 2023 before the injury to his left wrist at Quail Hollow.
“It wasn't the same issue, but this hand has been a problem going back to the fall and winter of ‘17,” he said. “I’m hoping the scope combined with the ECU is knocking it all out.”
Spieth said the longest he has gone without a club in his hand was probably eight days. He said his goal was to be able to putt in eight weeks and make a full swing at 12 weeks and then rebuild strength.
It was too early to say if he might be ready in December for the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas (he would need an exemption) or the PNC Championship with his father, Shawn.
“My personality is a little tricky with how long this surgery takes to get back to the full go of things,” Spieth said. “It's called patience, or lack of it with me.”
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