The $8.8 million John Deere Classic has had 25 first-time winners, one of them being Jordan Spieth. He has secured two victories, one in 2013 and again in 2015. So, TPC Deere Run is one of the courses he is very fond of. But this time, the 13-time PGA Tour winner produced a moment that was as unusual as it was memorable when his golf ball landed underneath a recycling bin.
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The incident occurred on the par-4 15th. After starting on the back nine, Jordan Spieth hit a 306-yard tee shot that landed on the left rough. When Spieth came to assess his lie, he couldn’t find the ball and realized it had rolled underneath a trashcan. Yes, that happened. Now there were two trashcans. Spieth moved the first one. The ball wasn’t there.
He then moved the second one, and it turns out the ball got “embedded” in the deep rough. Naturally, a rules official’s expertise was the need of the hour. Commentators could be heard laughing at another Jordan Spieth adventure. The conversation with the rules official went as follows. Spieth asked, “So what can I do?” The rules official looked visibly confused before judging the situation and asking Spieth to move the ball enough to recreate the “original lie.” “So it doesn’t have to be as embedded?” the American professional asked.
One man's trash is Jordan Spieth's treasure.
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As he got confirmation, he placed the ball nearby and hit it straight to the green. The ball landed just three feet and three inches from the hole, allowing him to pick up a birdie. The core rule here is the embedded-ball relief in the general area.
The status of the trash cans also adds a layer. Under Rule 16.3, a golfer gets free relief when the ball is embedded in its own pitch mark in the general area. In simpler terms, if part of the ball is below ground level, and that lie is because of the previous stroke, the golfer gets free relief. However, this rule does not apply in penalty areas or bunkers.
Shifting recycling bins isn’t the first incident in which Jordan Spieth has done something that makes you wonder what he is doing. There have been plenty of others, such as the Royal Birkdale driving range drop at the 2017 Open Championship. He blasted his tee shot miles right onto a dune by the practice range. As a result, he and his team looked for the ball. After finding the ball, officials held a consultation and allowed him a line‑of‑sight drop on the actual driving range.
This year, at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, he sought help from fans for something similar. In the third round, he hit the ball into thick bushes. So, he pulled nearby fans into a semi-organized search party to avoid getting a lost-ball penalty. Jordan Spieth’s round was going well until this hole.
He made a bogey on the 13th and birdies on the 11th, 14th, and 15th. But then, on the par-4 18th, he hit the second shot into the water on the left and got a penalty. He ended the hole with a double bogey. On the front nine, he then had two bogeys and three birdies to finish 1-under 70.
Despite the 1-under 70 opening round, Jordan Spieth once again showed why he remains one of the PGA Tour’s most entertaining players. He turned an unusual situation into a birdie. He will need to maintain that momentum if he wants to win the John Deere Classic for a third time and end his more than three-year winless drought.