For Jordan Spieth, this wasn’t an anomaly. It was the latest chapter in a season defined by recovery. On the par-5 third at TPC Southwind, his tee shot sailed left of the fairway and settled next to the porta potties, and by the time he’d finished the hole, golf fans had a new addition to his highlight reel. Spieth needed relief from the temporary structures before he could even swing again. A video of the shot was shared by Golf on CBS on YouTube, spreading the moment well beyond those watching live at TPC Southwind.
What followed was a punch-out back to the fairway, then an approach from 225 yards that settled 20 feet from the hole. He rolled in the putt for par, and the round never picked up another blemish. He signed for a five-under 65 at the 2026 FedEx St. Jude Championship. It looks like just another hole on a Thursday scorecard, but it’s really the whole story of Spieth’s season this year. He isn’t staying out of trouble. He’s getting really good at getting out of it.
That single hole says something bigger than one bad tee shot. For Spieth, scrambling to save par from a strange spot isn’t a rare event anymore. It’s closer to a habit. When a player’s most talked about shots keep coming from porta potties and cliff edges instead of the fairway, “normal” stops being the expectation and starts being the surprise.
His standing on Tour has shifted quietly around that reality. Nobody’s holding their breath for a clean approach shot anymore; the crowd perks up when he’s standing over a wedge next to a porta potty, trying to find a way out.
Even Spieth sounded surprised by his own tee shot. Talking to reporters after the round, he said he hadn’t hit a drive that far off line in something like 20 years, and admitted the escape shot he hit next was probably the best swing he made all day. Coming from a guy who has built a career out of these moments, that’s saying something.
Spieth entered the FedEx St. Jude Championship ranked 74th on Tour in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee this season, a modest positive mark that hides how bumpy the road there was. He was still in negative territory as late as March, sitting 121st, and hadn’t climbed out of the bottom third by the time The Players rolled around. Some weeks the old swing shows up. Other weeks it doesn’t, and that’s how you end up with a bogey-free 65 and a trip to the porta potties in the same round.
A Track Record Written in Trouble
This wasn’t even his first run-in with a porta potty. Back at the 2023 PGA Championship, his opening tee shot of the third round wound up near a bank of portable restrooms, and officials had to grant him relief before he could play on. His frustration boiled over a few holes later, when a hot microphone caught him dropping an F-bomb after another poor iron shot, and the clip made its way around golf Twitter for days. Different tournament, different course, three years apart, and somehow he found the exact same kind of trouble both times.
The theme resurfaced again this year at the PGA Championship at Aronimink. Spieth ended up attempting a flop shot over a cluster of roughly ten porta potties just to salvage a double bogey, part of an up and down stretch that had commentators comparing his round to a rollercoaster ride. The attempt was bold enough that his fellow pros took notice afterward, with Justin Thomas guessing only a handful of golfers in the world could have pulled it off, and Michael Kim suggesting Spieth may have been the only player in the entire field willing to even try it.
Restrooms aren’t the only hazard he’s flirted with. His tee shot at the 2022 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am drifted right on the par-4 8th and settled a few feet from a cliff that drops straight to the shoreline. Caddie Michael Greller tried three times to talk him into a safe drop. Spieth played it anyway, from right on the edge, and rocked backward the moment he made contact. He missed the green, got up and down for par, and later admitted that explaining the decision to his wife and parents afterward weighed on him almost as much as the shot itself.
Line up the porta potties, the cart paths, and the cliff edge, and the common denominator isn’t bad luck. It’s what Spieth does next. His short game keeps bailing him out before a bad break turns into an actual bad score.
That’s really the whole story with Spieth right now. His driving has been unreliable for long stretches of his career, but his feel around the greens hasn’t gone anywhere. He can still turn a bad position into a par or a birdie more often than most players on Tour. The tee shots have gotten wilder, the short game hasn’t budged, and that’s exactly why a boring, ordinary lie in the middle of the fairway looks almost out of character for him these days.
Spieth carries that same formula into the rest of the FedEx Cup Playoffs. He arrived in Memphis at No. 54 in the standings, four spots outside the top 50 cutoff that determines who advances to next week’s BMW Championship at Bellerive Country Club. Getting there matters beyond this season alone. It’s the difference between chasing sponsor exemptions into next year’s signature events, like he had to do this year, and simply showing up already qualified. He backed up the opening 65 with a 1-under 69 in round two, good for 134 and 6 under through 36 holes, and it’s moved him to a projected 43rd in the FedExCup standings, an 11-spot jump that would put him back inside the cutoff line. Whatever happens the rest of the week, the next unlikely par is probably already on its way, waiting on wherever his next tee shot lands.