Why there's optimism ahead for Jordan Spieth despite fading down the stretch at AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am

Spieth nearly won at Pebble Beach, and now the rest of his spring looks like it could be a show

If you came into the 2022 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am pessimistic about Jordan Spieth's season, you were in good company. Spieth had quietly been average, or a bit below it, for most of the 2021-22 PGA Tour season, although that sample size remained fairly small.

Regardless of size, though, the numbers were bad. He was not hitting his irons well, not finishing tournaments well and none of it looked particularly compelling. Where was the Spieth who thrilled throughout 2021, won the Texas Open and nearly claimed two major championships?

It's true that he had his first baby in November, and also true that he was in the hospital during Farmers Insurance Open week (a place he rarely plays well), but these are the types of things that typically fade away when the best in the world get between the ropes. For Spieth, however, the only thing fading was his world ranking -- and sometimes a blocked drive or two.

Pebble, however, seemed to ignite his soul. He took us to the literal edge of the abyss on Saturday, which is something he's done more or less throughout his entire career, and then gave us everything we'd been hoping for since that near-miss at Royal St. George's last July. In two measured rounds at Pebble, Spieth led the field in strokes gained on approach shots and strokes gained tee to green -- his bread and butter, and the part of his game that's made him a ton of dough. Unfortunately, he was usurped by a man named Hoge in the end, but the end doesn't much matter to me when talking about the future. It doesn't sound like it matters much to him either.

"Driver got off towards the end, I probably should have hit iron off of 15 and I hit driver and that took away one of my birdie chances," said Spieth. "Other than that, I hit every shot really where I wanted to hit them. And typically that works out really well for me, it just didn't quite today."

He mentioned that he needs to just keep doing what he's doing, which is true of the way he played on Saturday and Sunday, although not true of the way he played on Thursday and Friday. Spieth ran into a multi-pronged problem on the weekend at Pebble. He put himself too deep in the hole over the first 36, and then Hoge didn't miss the middle of the club face over the last nine. He hit seven approaches inside 20 feet and toasted the rest of the field. Spieth's bogey at No. 17 was not good, as noted above, but a par there still means he likely loses by one.

"I still feel like there's some significant progression to get it to where I want it to go, and I feel that certain range sessions are like, 'Wow, I feel, those are striped and every ball's on a string,'" said Spieth. "Transferring it to the course just keeps getting better and better. Tournaments like this where, on a Saturday, Sunday as you're towards the top of the leaderboard and you need to keep trusting things are where I really make progress."

Spieth's swing does look different. Slower, and perhaps more repeatable. I'm not a swing philosophizer, but we did discuss it on the First Cut Podcast on Sunday evening. The pre-shot takeaway practice swing is stressful, but everything else seems to be working.

"I think I was first in tee to green yesterday or maybe approach," added Spieth. "That's where I've felt I've been heading for rounds like that where I can ball-strike my way into really low rounds and when the putter's hot then that's when you win the golf tournament."

Rick Gehman, Greg DuCharme and Kyle Porter react to Tom Hoge's victory at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Follow & listen to The First Cut on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

There is reason for optimism for the rest of 2022. With Phoenix and Riviera on deck, and the Masters just over 50 days away, Spieth's trajectory for this year looks a lot different than it did this time last week. It's the greatest courses that always seem to arouse him the most. Pebble Beach is not a traditional links track, but it has enough elements that Spieth's creativity can bubble to the surface. As he said at the Open Championship last year, living in that creative external is where he needs to be.

It's also true that Spieth needs to start winning more. If he's generationally good, and I still believe he is, then one win since summer 2017 iis not good enough. The desert was the desert, but he's emerged from it and it doesn't look like there's a massive risk of him fully regressing back into it. Now? It's all about trophies.

"I mean, I would say it had been quite awhile now since I was really in contention, and so I can almost look at [Pebble 2022] as very similar to my Phoenix-type tournament [in 2021] where it was kind of the first time in contention in a little while," he said. "Definitely yesterday and today the second half of yesterday and all of today's round had some nerves, I guess adrenaline is a better way to put it. I stayed positive, I looked what I was working on. I liked the way I struck the ball this week and felt like I was putting it better each day. So I was eyeing today as a low one and it very well could have been."

It's a fool's errand to try and spin career narratives based on single rounds, but Spieth needed that 63-69 at Pebble over the weekend to provide some light for the future. Fields are only going to get more difficult from here through the Masters, but now there's a recent bank deposit from which to draw. That's good news if you're a Spieth fan, and it's even better news if you're a consumer of his world-class artistry that the pendulum seems to be swinging stronger than ever -- from an alpinist's view of the Pacific to a superstar's view of the end of a tournament.

The weekend at Pebble was as fun and as death-defying -- this time, somewhat literally -- as ever with Spieth. That's the whole deal with him, and it's half the fun of it all. Coupled with wins in the future, and it will be a reminder of why he's perhaps the most entertaining show in all of sports.