Jordan Spieth insists he is unfazed by chance to eclipse Tiger Woods
Should 24-year-old win US PGA Championship, he will break Woods’s record as youngest male ever to finish grand slam set
Charlotte, North Carolina: Jordan Spieth goes into this week’s US PGA Championship dismissing the notion that he will be affected by all the expectation of completing the career grand slam.
Should he prevail in Charlotte, Spieth, who won the Open two weeks ago, would break Tiger Woods’s record as the youngest male ever to finish the set.
But the 24-year-old insists that should he fail, he would not look at it as an opportunity lost.
“I really don’t feel any added pressure whatsoever,” Spieth said.
“If it happens (this week), great. If it doesn’t, then my next and probably last lifelong goal as a professional would be to win the career grand slam.
“I’m sure going to give it my best next week, but I don’t need to be the youngest. Quail Hollow is a place I love, but it has made a lot of changes. So we have to get there and learn it.”
Spieth has played at the George W Cobb design only once and that was in 2014, when he finished tied 32nd in the Wells Fargo Championship.
However, he clearly believes that the renovation undertaken in the past 12 months will aid his attempt. The ryegrass on the greens has been replaced by Bermuda and four holes have been either extensively remodelled or are new altogether. Jimmy Walker, the defending US PGA champion, is one of the few in the field to have played the course since the alterations and thinks that it could provide an unfamiliar test to the one PGA Tour members are used to encountering on the popular annual stop in North Carolina. “It has the potential to play completely different,” Walker said. “It has a potential to play really firm and really fast. And that’s when golf gets really hard — when you start losing control of the ball.”
