Jordan Spieth has slipped outside of the top 50 of the Official World Golf Ranking for the first time in over three years. The three-time major champion and former world No.1 endured a tricky 2024 season on the PGA Tour.
Spieth failed to win a tournament again this year and missed seven cuts, including at the Masters. He did still make it to the FedEx Cup Playoffs but was eliminated in the opening event.
It was after the FedEx St. Jude Championship that he had surgery to resolve a wrist injury which had been plaguing his game since the 2023 PGA Championship. He’s now gearing up for his return next year – but he’ll be doing so ranked outside the top 50.
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Spieth has slipped to 51st with his average points of 2.0829 in the updated OWGR standings. He hasn’t been that low since March 2021, at which point he’d gone 82 events – or 1,351 days – without winning.
He ended that torrid run at the 2021 Texas Open. That had been quite the fall from grace to Spieth, who first became the highest-ranked men’s golfer in 2015.
He won the Masters and the US Open before finishing second in the PGA Championship, which earned him top spot. He held that position for a total of 26 weeks across 2015 and 2016, going on to win the Open in 2017.
While his career hasn’t taken off like he would’ve hoped since then, Spieth still believes he can get back to his best. Speaking about his comeback plans following his surgery, he told Golfweek: “I think that by 2025, by January 1, it’s my goal to be tournament-ready. And for me, that would be not just going out and seeing how it feels, you know, but expecting to play at my ceiling.
“I’ll have an opportunity to work really hard on my short game before I can even swing. So I should be able to get back to that work pretty soon and hopefully get that really dialled so that I can then prioritise getting back to hitting balls and then eventually playing.
“I don’t know how long that’ll take because it kind of depends on how quickly the mobility and the strength come back, but given my age and the way it’s progressed so far, those are our advantages to this recovery. But I’ll wait till it feels the same until I come back and play.”
