Golf never needed a splendid, record-matching, era-opening, semi-runaway Masters win more than it did this one. A marvelous 800-year-old game, in the midst of rugged hard times with its popularity declining for years and American golf in the doldrums, got exactly what it needed: very likely the next true great. How good is he? In the last 100 years, who are some of the youngest golfers to win a major? Gene Sarazen at 20; Tiger Woods, Bobby Jones, Walter Hagen and now Spieth at 21; Rory McIlroy, Jack Nicklaus and Seve Ballesteros at 22. So is that self-evident enough? Together, they may constitute almost half of golf history.
...we should try to grasp the weight on Spieth on Sunday. We may never see a day when an entire sport — a whole industry — was more emotionally and financially invested in one young player holding on to a precarious lead. - Thomas Boswell, Washington Post
When Jordan Spieth won the Masters on Sunday, we won too. People who have grown sick of self-absorbed athletes won. Parents and coaches preaching sportsmanship in youth sports won. Those young athletes won, too.
They won because they witnessed something we don't see every day on our grandest cultural stages. They saw a young American, not even 22 years old, win one of the great U.S. sporting events with a kind of unspoken class and grace that would seem to come from another era. - Christine Brennan, USA Today
No, Spieth is not immune to the pressure. He just manages it exceptionally well...Spieth...seems superbly human. His personality is a delightful cocktail of modesty and self-assuredness. All week, he shared his mental mistakes with the media, unprompted.
...Spieth will never have to hear about “finally” or a “monkey on his back” or “best player never to have won a major,” though he might hear “damn you!” a few times from Sergio Garcia. This is a gift Spieth gave himself: a career without that pressure of trying to win his first major. Of course, he hadn’t even left the course when he said he wants to win more majors. This is how the great ones think. - Michael Rosenberg, Golf.com
He was like apple pie with a golf club. There was nothing more Americana than Jordan Spieth this weekend. - Kevin Plank, CEO of Under Armour
Jordan is so beyond his years. I like everything about the young man. He’s polite, he’s humble, he handles himself so well, on and off the golf course. And he’s obviously a wonderful player and now a Masters champion. I think Jordan Spieth is a great person – just as I think Rory McIlroy is – to carry the mantle for the game of golf. - Jack Nicklaus
Whenever I think of Jordan Spieth, I think of a compliment Kirk Douglas once paid to his son Michael Douglas: "I am proud of Michael for many, many reasons. But I am more proud of how he handles his success than I am of his success." That's what's most impressive about Spieth - the way he handles it all.
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