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Following a low-profile couple of months after the 2018-19 PGA Tour season ended, Jordan Spieth is back in the spotlight. Well, I guess if the spotlight shines in the middle of the night where you live and Golf Channel is included in your cable package.

Spieth will take part in the CJ Cup at Nine Bridges for the first time in his career this week, and he joins a field that includes Brooks Koepka, Justin Thomas, Viktor Hovland, Hideki Matsuyama and Tommy Fleetwood. One thing those five guys have in common? They all have better Vegas odds than Spieth to win this week on Jeju Island.

There's a reason for this. Spieth has dropped to No. 38 in the world, and depending on how the next few weeks go, could drop outside the top 40 for the first time since August 10, 2013. 

Six years is a long time to exist in the upper crust of golf, but Spieth is not normal. He's set apart. His game has broken all kinds of records and destroyed all manner of trajectories. Until the last 18 months. In the last 18 months, he's struggled. He's slumped. He's given the same rote answers to the same rote questions with both parties knowing no change was imminent.

"Yeah, my goals are pretty personal right now," said Spieth this week. "I certainly want to get back in the winner's circle. It's been a little while, and I would like to be more consistent this year, being able to tee it up on Sundays with chances to win more consistently and that comes from better ball-striking. 

"So I've been working hard on my tee-to-green game to get it back on track where it's been before, and when that gets cleared up, which it feels like it's close to being done, then should present some more weekend opportunities with chances to win golf tournaments."

What's he supposed to say?

Should he point out that he was 157th on the PGA Tour in strokes gained tee to green? Or that he hasn't had a first-or second-place finish in either of the last two calendar years?

At this point in Spieth's evolution, we're in a "I'll believe it when I see it" phase. I certainly believe in his long-term prospects, and if you're selling stock, I want it all. But he's been too sloppy for too long for me to believe that he's "close" on Wednesday until I see it on Saturday and Sunday.

That's a good spot to begin, too. In 2018-19, Spieth ranked 170th in Round 3 scoring on Saturday and (somehow worse at) 187th in Round 4 scoring on Sundays. He showed flashes last season. A T3 at the PGA Championship, three straight top 10s to start the summer and a top 10 at the Northern Trust. Most of it was a mirage. Here's the stat I pulled after his T6 at the Northern Trust: He's now gained an average of 1.5 (!) strokes per round on the field with his putter in six different events and has just three top 10s to show for it (and two cuts!). 

There is hope for the tee-to-green game, though. Spieth finished second on the PGA Tour in putting this year, like I noted above, but he was 123rd the year before. He fixed that part of his game, and now he needs to fix the rest. 

Listen, I want Jordan Spieth to be great. Golf is so, so much better when he is. But I also need to see it for an extended period of time first. Everybody has down years, too. Even Spieth's contemporaries -- maybe especially Spieth's contemporaries given that golf has never been more competitive nor lucrative. But 2020 is a big "prove it" year for Spieth in the grand arc of his career.

There's a Ryder Cup to consider, a young throng of stars looking to lap him and the potential psychological damage being in a rut for that long can cause. I think Spieth is impervious to all of that because I think Spieth is historically -- maybe even generationally -- special. But at some point that becomes no longer true, and "at some point" could be defined by what Spieth does in the 2019-20 PGA Tour season.