There is golf all over the globe this week. Rory McIlroy is in Dubai. The PGA Tour is in Georgia. And Jordan Spieth is in Australia playing the Australian Open, which he won two years ago before his historic 2015 run in which he captured two major championships.

Spieth shot a 3-under 69 on Thursday in the first round while paired with the reigning U.S. Amateur champion and Australian Curtis Luck. Playing with some new clubs in his bag, Spieth made a ho-hum four birdies and a bogey and seemed fine with his performance since the Ryder Cup at the beginning of October.

"We had a lot of fun out there as a group," said Spieth. "It's a really, really impressive short game Curtis has. I got myself off to a decent start. I'm in good position. My putter was a bit cold. I didn't adjust to the speed of the greens well."

Luck upended the No. 5 golfer in the world with a 5-under 67 and shares the first-round lead with Lucas Herbert.

"He was better composed than I was. No doubt," Spieth added to the Australian AP. "Certainly I learned a lot from him today on that side of things. He was smiling the whole time, really enjoying himself. I got a little frustrated there when I was hitting it close and just couldn't capitalize."

''He could have shot even par for the day and instead he turned that into 5 under there in the middle of the round," Spieth added to the AP. "So that's the kind of stuff that is unteachable, and he has that.''


I'm curious to see if the lead holds for Luck. He is clearly talented as you don't win the U.S. Amateur unless you're an enormous talent. But beating Spieth and other big names (Geoff Ogilvy is also playing in this group) is a different story.

Because of the time difference, Spieth (and Luck) will actually play the second round on TV on Friday evening in the United States. Primetime golf in November from beautiful Australia. It doesn't get much better than that.