Jordan Spieth remains on Tour Championship bubble after rollercoaster Round 4 at BMW Championship
Has Jordan Spieth’s PGA Tour season come to an end? Through four rounds of the 2023 BMW Championship, the penultimate FedEx Cup Playoffs event, that question remains unanswered as the 2015 FedEx Cup champion is firmly on the bubble as his fellow competitors complete their tournaments at Olympia Fields on Sunday.
Carding a 72-hole total of 1-over 281, Spieth will finish outside the top 30 in the 50-man field but may have done enough to remain inside the top 30 of the FedEx Cup and qualify for the 2023 Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club when all is said and done. Projected to fall from 27th to 30th in the season-long race with his play outside Chicago, Spieth will now have to wait and see how fellow bubble boys Denny McCarthy, Justin Rose and Tyrrell Hatton to finish their rounds.
Spieth’s final round was a rollercoaster, as expected. Making a double bogey to begin his back nine, Spieth found himself projected to fall outside the number before he got to work. A pair of birdies on 13 and 15 gave him some much-needed breathing room before the wheels began to fall off coming down the difficult homestretch. Bogeys on the final two holes will make his wait more nerve wracking, but he still remains on the inside track to tee it up in Atlanta next week.
If Spieth were to fall on the wrong side of the number, it would mark his fourth absence from the Tour Championship since 2018.
Spieth experienced an odd season, even for his standards. He contended a designated events, the WM Phoenix Open and the Arnold Palmer Invitational before nearly winning the Valspar Championship where a late water ball derailed his chances. A Sunday charge alongside Phil Mickelson in the final round of the Masters saw Spieth finish in a share of fourth at the year’s first major championship.
He nearly accomplished a career first the following week at the RBC Heritage where he served as the defending champion. Unable to defeat Matt Fitzpatrick in a playoff, Spieth settled for runner-up honors and failed to successfully defend a title for the first time in his career.
Injuries began to form at the Wells Fargo Championship where he threw out his back and jammed his wrist. In his last nine events of the 2023 campaign, Spieth missed four cuts, two of which came at historically comfortable spots: the Charles Schwab Challenge and Scottish Open.
He kicked off his FedEx Cup Playoffs in typical Spieth fashion, grabbing the first-round lead at the St. Jude Championship, but he couldn’t sustain the pace over the next 54 holes. Instead he settled for a T6 result. Despite collecting his best finish since his top five at the Memorial Tournament, Spieth did not harness this momentum around Olympia Fields and has left his Tour Championship fate in the hands of others.
