The leaderboard is shaping up to be a fun one at the 2023 St. Jude Championship at TPC Southwind as the first event of the FedEx Cup Playoffs prepares to set the tone for the rest of the month. Most notably, Jordan Spieth had a very Jordan Spieth round on Friday.
After leading outright following the first 18 holes, Spieth now sits one back of new leader Lucas Glover, who came into the playoffs hot off a win last week at the Wyndham Championship. Glover continues to flush the ball and now heads into Moving Day where he ended last Sunday — on top.
Memphis is not Greensboro, though, and Glover has some serious company pushing him as the St. Jude Championship enters its final 36 holes. Rory McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler, Tommy Fleetwood and Sungjae Im all made moves in Round 2, and they sit within three strokes of the lead with two rounds remaining.
Let’s dive a bit deeper into Glover’s round and take a look at what we can expect over the final two days.
The leader
1. Lucas Glover (-10): Your favorite flusher’s favorite flusher remains flushing. Glover is first in the field from tee to green and first in the field in approach shots (by a wide margin), but the story of his week has been the story of his last few months. That is, Glover’s putter has not been terrible. And for this former U.S. Open champion, “not terrible” so often leads to immediate contention.
His three best putting performances have come in the last six weeks; they have lead to a T4 at the Rocket Mortgage Classic, a T6 at the John Deere and last week’s victory. He’s right at field average this week with the broomstick putter, and if that continues, we could be looking at back-to-back victories for Glover.
“This game is cruel, man,” Glover said after his second round. “You can play nice and just get cruddy results, and then you can kind of hit it bad and get a couple good breaks and get some good results. It’s hard. Still a round ball, hitting it with a flat object. It’s difficult.
“I think, for me, it’s just don’t overthink it, keep doing what we’ve been doing. And for me, it’s putt nice and work on my wedges. It helps my rhythm. So, just same formula the last few months.”
Other contenders
2. Jordan Spieth (-9)
T3. Sungjae Im, Taylor Moore, Tommy Fleetwood, Emiliano Grillo, Tom Kim (-8)
T8. Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy (-7)
Spieth’s round was a ride. That’s no surprise for him. He started with two early bogeys, hit two different shots in the water, nearly finished last in approach play and somehow shot 68 to move within one of Glover’s lead. How does something like this happen? Well, not without some absolutely disgusting short game and bunker play. A lot of shots like this.
On the third hole (Spieth’s 12th of the day), he hit a ball from the left rough into the right water and somehow made par from there. His explanation was a pretty good summation of his career: “No. 3 was probably one of the worst decisions I made. Michael was all over, ‘This isn’t the shot, this isn’t the shot,’ and I was like, ‘I think I can pull this one off.’ And then I hit it, and I’m like, ‘Yeah, I can’t really hook that out of this rough into this wind.’
“After that, I was like, ‘All right, if I just — I’m playing well enough. Just stop making the bad decisions and we’ll go under par from here.’ So, it was nice to be 1 under from there even though it was a weird way of getting there.”
I don’t know what we’re getting on the weekend — Spieth has been mediocre since April other than a T5 at the Memorial — but you can bet it’s going to be a thrill as he tries to play his way toward a second FedEx Cup trophy and into form for next month’s Ryder Cup.
2023 St. Jude Championship updated odds, picks
Scottie Scheffler: 11/2
Jordan Spieth: 6-1
Rory McIlroy: 13/2
Lucas Glover: 15/2
Tommy Fleetwood: 10-1
Tom Kim: 12-1
Sungjae Im: 14-1
Emiliano Grillo: 18-1
There are not many good numbers here. Glover is intriguing at 15/2 given how well he’s hitting the ball. Same with McIlroy at 13/2, but I don’t love either number going into Saturday. Spieth is going to Spieth, and there’s so little value in Scheffler given that he’s three back with seven players in front of him. If I have to take somebody, it would probably be McIlroy. He’s first in ball-striking this week and just needs to see a few fall to make a leap to the top of this board. He’s played tremendously well at this course before (three top 12s), and I expect him to finish in the top three at the end of the week.
