Jordan Spieth runs in some pretty impressive circles; that’s what happens when you’re 23 years old, one of the faces of your sport and raking in millions of dollars per year in earnings and endorsements. It turns out the famous and successful friends Spieth has acquired are rubbing off on the Texan.
Instagram/@JordanSpieth
In the lead up to The Open Championship, Spieth took a vacation to Cabo San Lucas with a who’s who of sporting royalty that included Michael Phelps, Michael Jordan, Russell Wilson, Dwight Freeney and Fred Couples. During his time there, Spieth had a special evening with Phelps and Jordan that he credited with spurring him on to a great opening round at The Open on Thursday.
Q. I know it’s just a vacation, but when you were with that group of great athletes in Cabo, did you learn anything about competing? When you’re in that room do you realize, ‘wow, I belong with these guys’?
JORDAN SPIETH: I don’t know, two of them are the greatest all time at what they’ve done, so I don’t think so, to that extent. But, sure, it was mostly fun. That picture came from the Fourth of July dinner that we had. I was down there with a group of my high school friends and then they started to kind of leave, and I stayed with Andy there and we ended up meeting up. Yeah, did a bit of talking about goals.
Michael Phelps has actually been a tremendous new friend that I’ve had since really Phoenix this last year, and he invited myself and Michael (Jordan) over to their house. And we talked for quite a while. I think pretty late into the evening before one of the rounds just because we just enjoyed talking about — I enjoyed listening to him. He wanted to hear from my side of the things, just about the good, the bad, everything that comes with what we do. And so I spent more time with him than the rest of the crew there while we were down there. And he’s become a good friend and somebody who I could call at any time, and he’s offered that. I think that’s — certainly, I’d be doing myself a disservice if I don’t keep taking him up on it.
But, yeah, I looked around the room there and, ‘wow, this is cool.’ This is cool, these guys, they include me and ask about what I’m doing, and these are guys I’ve looked up to my entire life. And it kind of gives you a nice boost of confidence, if I needed an even bigger head.
That boost of confidence led Spieth to a first-round 65 that has him tied for the lead heading into Friday at Royal Birkdale.
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