Another “oldie but goodie” hosts the PGA Tour this week as Riviera Country Club and Hogan’s Alley welcome the PGA boys to the Northern Trust Open.
Riviera boasts an impressive legacy. The classic George Thomas design has been home to the U.S. Open, PGA Championships and a U.S. Senior Open. Ben Hogan won his first U.S. Open here and past winners of the L.A. Open/Northern Trust include Byron Nelson, Sam Snead, Tom Watson, Nick Faldo and Phil Mickelson.
With as familiar a stop as Riviera is to the players there is one that still insists on doing some heavy duty homework on this week’ venue.
Geoff Shackelford, who literally wrote the book on Riviera (he penned its history) offers us a peek inside the number one golfer in the world and although he’s just twenty two Spieth thinks like an old soul.
Considering the similarities Riviera shares with last week’s tour stop in terms of the greens—small by modern standards and grassed with Poa Annua—Spieth would seem ready to go for his 12:12 pm PT tee time Thursday with Justin Thomas and Fred Couples.
“You can go back in your memory, and I can picture all the holes,” he said in a pre-tournament news conference. “I know where the pins are, I know where the breaks are on those greens. But you’ve still got to get on to the practice greens and then dial in the feel, dial in the speed.”
But here’s where Spieth reveals why he’s different.
“This poa annua putts differently than it did last week at the courses that we played there in Pebble Beach, and so you’ve got to really — you’ve got to be careful here,” he said. “It can get away from you very quickly. And it’s hard to get below the hole. That’s the thing out here. So you start to go to the driving range and I’ll start to try and work on some shots where you kind of float ones in, work on a lot of shots that you can loft up in the air more than maybe you would do last week.”
Like we have said before, this kid gets it. In so many ways.
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