Jordan Spieth: Runaway victor at Hyundai Tournament of Champions

Jordan Spieth, quizzed relentlessly about how he was going to top his stellar and historic 2015, let his clubs do the talking Sunday en route to routing the field and destroying the Plantation Course at Kapalua Resort on the island of Maui.

World golf number one Jordan Spieth.

KAPALUA, Hawaii (AP) – The stars are back at Kapalua, and perhaps this is where the brightest will shine again.

With Day, the USPGA champion, back in a tie for 10th at Kapalua, Spieth has opened up a near 1.4pt lead in the rankings over the Australian and a 1.83pt lead over McIlroy. “You’re going to have to play a good, solid golf tournament to have a chance to win”. He won five times, and his victory at the Tour Championship secured the FedEx Cup.

Jordan Spieth with the first of many trophies in 2016.

“I felt like it was just a short three-week break over the holidays and then I just try to continue exactly what we were doing a year ago”.

World No. 2 Jason Day, who was playing for the first time in three months, shot a 65 to finish tied for 10th at 15 under. Only Ernie Els, at this tournament on this course in 2003, has scored better, shooting 31-under par.

At one point, Koepka pulled within one-shot of the lead.

The statement was almost as big as his eight-shot victory. Since winning the Valspar Championship last March, Spieth has embarked on the kind of purposeful, profitable run that would’ve made Gebrselassie look like some wheezing clumper forlornly trying to jog off the festive excess.

Brooks Koepka, playing with Spieth in the final group, had a wild start to his round but never got closer than the five-shot deficit he faced at the start. “When Tiger is in contention, why is his record so phenomenal?”

Although Spieth quickly dismissed the comparisons calling them “premature”, Butch Harmon, who was Woods’ swing coach from 1996 to August 2002, sees plenty of similarities. But I find it hard to believe what he did can be matched, to be able to do it for an entire career like he did.

That could be one of the perks Sunday.

Horton Smith won 10 tournaments before turning 22, including eight in the nascent PGA Tour’s 1929 season. He rolled to a nine-shot victory that week.

Harmon explained the key difference between Spieth and Woods was the latter’s length advantage off the tee. Spieth is capable of spectacular long shots-his 3-iron from 250 yards on the par-5 18th Saturday grazed the hole and led to a third-round-concluding eagle-but his greatest physical weapons are chipping and putting. Els was runner-up to him four times that year. He would later become the first victor of the Masters Tournament in 1934. He completed the career Grand Slam.

Five players have shot 28 under par in a 72-hole PGA Tour event – most recently Patrick Reed at the 2014 Humana Challenge and Phil Mickelson at the 2013 Waste Management Phoenix Open. And he was just getting started.

Nonetheless, Spieth is aware it takes more than one phenomenal year to retain those Woods comparisons.