Jordan Spieth delves into wrist injury that plagued him that season, hopes to ‘get it right in the new year’

After undergoing left wrist surgery last week, Jordan Spieth told SiriusXM PGA Tour Radio on Wednesday that he expects to be out through 2024 but will be “perfectly fine in the new year.”

In a conversation with Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz, Spieth said his doctor was “pretty excited” to find something in his wrist that some MRIs didn’t show.

“Anytime someone does, you know, 30,000 to 40,000 surgeries, getting excited about something, you know, that’s why I feel good about it, I guess,” Spieth said. “By then, it’s going to be better than it was before.”

The wrist issue has officially been a problem for Spieth since the 2022 PGA Championship, but he said Wednesday it has actually been going on since late 2017 or early 2018.

“I probably didn’t fix it at the time, and I got into some bad habits, and then when I started swinging it better a couple of years ago, it started acting up again,” he said. “And then I finally had an incident last May, over a year ago, where I was with my son in the pool and I just got out and something popped and I couldn’t move it. I had to pull out of Byron the following week. And it’s been something this year where that kind of dislocation has happened, you know, about 20 times since February.” [of 2024] and this started happening more and more.

“So, unfortunately, it’s something that can’t be fixed by just resting,” he continued. “So that’s why I ended up having to do this. So the answer, I mean, it’s been a long time in general, so hopefully this will clear everything up from that initial incident.”

Even though Spieth played all year and didn’t make it to the second FedEx Cup Playoff event, the BMW Championship, he said he barely made it that far in the season.

“But there was one day, it was John Deere Friday this year, when I actually texted [caddie] Michael [Greller] like, ‘Hey man, it just came out last night, it hasn’t been put back in overnight. And I can’t do that. I have to go fix this right now,'” Spieth explained.

“So John Deere Friday, I actually called it quits. It was an afternoon tee time and I actually got to the driving range about 15 minutes early than my usual time. [because] I finally put it in and just said let’s see what happens here this week, and then I can reassess if I play through the Open or whatever. Well, towards the end of the year, that just started happening more and more.”

Spieth struggled in 2024 with one of the worst seasons of his career, although his ball striking was as good as ever. He lost a club on his approach play and said he almost canceled the season in July and had surgery afterward.

“Like I said, I really don’t want to make any excuses for myself throughout the year. [because] “It didn’t hurt to hit a shot,” he said. “And then I got into the competition, and then I just quit. It was weird. And so I guess it’s a big enough sample over a year that you’d think it would break you after a week or two, but for me, I just thought, ‘You know, hey, this is just something mechanical that I need to fix.’

“And at least I have some clarity now, right?” he continued. “I’m not blaming everything, but there’s something there that I’m not myself. And so hopefully I’ll get through this and not have to think about it again. I know it might not be like that for the first few months of coming back. But from what I’ve heard, I’ve talked to a lot of different players who have had similar surgeries and a lot of people in different sports and they say, ‘Look, one day you’re going to wake up and, if you’re patient enough, you rehab properly, you listen to the doctors and you put in the time, there’s going to be a day when you wake up and you’re like, ‘Man, I completely forgot that there was a problem.’ So I’m looking forward to that day.”

Spieth said he hoped to start playing again in November but playing any events in December “seems a little overwhelming”.