Jordan Spieth just said something the PGA Tour would rather not have on record. Not the part about momentum heading into Bay Hill, or the technical breakthrough with his putting stroke. The part where he admitted, with unusual candor, that he never wanted the exemption that got him through the door in the first place.

“I don’t want to use exemptions,” Spieth said following his T12 finish at Riviera. “I don’t want to ever have to use that again. It’s sucked the last couple of years.”

That admission lands at a specific moment: Spieth has accepted a sponsor exemption into the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill, a $20 million Signature Event he cannot access on merit, and his own words confirm he understands the difference between walking through an open door and earning the right to open it.

The facts are clear. Spieth is ranked 82nd in the world, outside the top-30 needed for automatic entry into Signature Events. His FedEx Cup position is around 70th, below the top-50 cutoff. In 2025, he received five sponsor exemptions, which accounted for 29% of his total FedEx Cup points, yet he still finished 54th and missed automatic qualification for 2026. Despite not winning last season, he earned $4.5 million from the Player Impact Program, which helps explain why sponsors continue to invite him.

The Bay Hill exemption shows how inconsistent these decisions can be. Spieth didn’t get an exemption in 2025 but did a year later. Other players, like Robert Garrigus, have voiced frustration about how exemptions are handed out. Spieth defended himself by saying tournaments invite players who help their event.

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Beyond the debate about exemptions, there’s also a technical side to Spieth’s story. Between the Sony Open and WM Phoenix Open, he went back to Trinity Forest Golf Club in Dallas to work with his longtime coach, Cameron McCormick. They focused on a setup adjustment, even though the conditions were, as Spieth put it, “frozen.”

As a result, Spieth brought back a putting stroke his peers hadn’t seen from him in years.

“Looking at my spot, like looking at the hole, it seems to be a weapon that I’ve got back,” he said. “You start as close to the hole as you can, and everything that feels comfortable just keeps going further and further away all the way into the long game.”

This technique, which relies on his sense of body position, helped Spieth win the 2015 Masters and U.S. Open. At Pebble Beach, he was third in Strokes Gained: Putting among the Signature Event players. At Riviera, he finished T12 at -11, with rounds of 67-70-70-70, nine birdies, and a final-round eagle.

“I feel very confident,” he said. “I like the stretch that’s coming up.”

Spieth’s case is just the latest example of a larger issue the PGA Tour has not addressed. The system for exemptions remains unclear and open to criticism.

Jordan Spieth’s exemption debate exposes a structural problem the PGA Tour won’t address

Rickie Fowler was given six sponsor exemptions into Signature Events in 2025, one more than Jordan Spieth, which drew heavy criticism at the time. Fowler earned 319 of his 665 FedEx Cup points from those starts, nearly half his season total.

Fowler, with his extra exemption, finished 48th, just inside the top-50 cutoff for 2026 Signature Event access. He then backed it up with strong results, finishing T7 at the Memorial and T6 at the FedEx St. Jude Championship.

The route Fowler took is still open to any player with enough commercial pull and the right connections. Chris Kirk, who got no exemptions, finished 51st on merit alone. He missed the cutoff by two spots, while Fowler crossed it with help from exemptions, doing almost half the work.

The Tour has not addressed this imbalance. Spieth, to his credit, has now said publicly what the institution will not.