PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — It only took Cameron McCormick about five minutes of speaking to 12-year-old Jordan Spieth for the professional swing coach to realize something about the future PGA Tour superstar sitting before him.

“I want to win the Masters,” a young Spieth said to McCormick, sitting in the Dallas-based coaching facility, Altus Performance.

McCormick didn’t dismiss the dream as over the top — and he could have. He hadn’t even seen Spieth hit a shot in person yet when his tween student made the bold declaration. McCormick instead used the moment to collect a data point about the athlete in front of him. That day it became clear: Spieth was a chronically impatient golfer.

The word “impatience” has a negative connotation, but McCormick’s assessment didn’t. He saw a restlessness in Spieth, a desire to achieve as quickly as possible, leaving no stone unturned. That trait, along with a wicked short game and one of the sport’s most imaginative brains, arguably led Spieth to win his green jacket at age 21 and a trifecta of majors before his 24th birthday. We hear it when hot mics catch him trying to bewitch his golf ball mid-flight. Or when he convinces Michael Greller, his longtime caddie, he can escape from any lie, anywhere. Impatience is part of the Spieth lore.

“On the spectrum of patience, he is the least patient of professional athletes that I’ve been around, which is a blessing and a curse,” McCormick said after a long range session with Spieth ahead of the Pebble Beach Pro-Am, where the latter is making his professional return this week. “He’s going to do the work, but when the results aren’t instantaneous, it becomes something that he has to manage and we have to manage as a team.”

Now, at age 31, nearly three years removed from his last visit to the winner’s circle, an injury has forced Spieth, for the first time, to abandon one of his core characteristics. And it could make a significant difference in the shaping of the next 10 years of his career.

Great question from @GabbyHerzig on Jordan Spieth’s short- and long-term goals as he makes his return this week from wrist surgery pic.twitter.com/EPVwd7xL2H

— Cameron Jourdan (@Cam_Jourdan) January 29, 2025

Spieth’s left wrist has been bothering him intermittently since 2018. In May 2023, things reached a tipping point when he felt something dislocate. That incident took him out of one tournament, but he kept playing, occasionally feeling the need to “pop” his tendon back into place. Last summer, in the middle of an abysmal season that included only three top-20s in 22 starts, the injury got out of control. “I had to pop it back into place like 50 times,” Spieth said. One of those moments came on the 72nd hole of The Open Championship.

He underwent surgery in August after his last tournament of the PGA Tour season, the FedEx St. Jude Championship. He couldn’t wait any longer. Spieth was in a cast from his mid-biceps down and wasn’t even cleared to grip a putter until eight weeks post-op. He was hitting Nerf foam-textured balls by November and was limited to a specific number of range shots with real balls until Dec. 1.

Now playing as a sponsor’s exemption this week, Spieth is making his first competitive start since the procedure. A 2-under 70 at Spyglass Hill in the opening round was a wildly promising start. The healing wrist tightened up on him after a testy bunker shot around the turn, and he still posted an under-par score. He was pleased with his ability to simply get the ball in the hole with less-than-ideal mobility on the back nine.

“Today would have probably felt like the hardest day to shoot a score, and I felt like I didn’t play great, and I shot 2 under. So that’s a really good sign,” Spieth said. “It’s just the little things, like the little off-speed shots, the hanging lies, the pins are tucked — they’re not in the middle of the green like they are at home. The mental side is picking conservative targets with aggressive swings and not thinking you can just go at everything.”

Spieth said he knows he can’t judge himself too quickly in these early weeks. Wrist aside, his legs are still reacclimating to walking four consecutive rounds of golf. That’s how out of it Spieth has been. But the first stretch back, and perhaps the entire season, is going to test Spieth mentally more than it will physically. Will he slip back into old habits or stay in an evolved mindset?

“This is a different Jordan,” McCormick said. “You’ve got a Jordan Spieth that is living and demonstrating patience and living and demonstrating acceptance. He’s been very easy to work with — more easy than most other times in my history coaching with him and more accepting of this being a process.”

Jordan Spieth is coming off a disastrous 2024 season. (Orlando Ramirez / Getty Images)

McCormick likens Spieth’s demeanor to an elevator: You can’t start on the ground floor and magically emerge in the penthouse. Spieth is working on accepting that there are levels ahead. He physically can’t skip them. In his coach’s mind, that necessity could transform the athlete he’s known for nearly two decades.

“There are many blessings that come out of the experiences that we go through,” McCormick said. “Oftentimes, they push us to transform, sometimes in emotional ways or psychological ways. This has been a psychological and emotional transformation opportunity that he’s really recognized and kind of leaned into.”

Spieth might not understand it yet, but the man who’s been there from junior golf to Year 13 on the PGA Tour has an inkling of how all of this could play out. Perhaps that subconscious switch in Spieth’s demeanor could be the key to achieving his short-term and long-term goals. The Texan wants to get into contention before the Masters and then make the U.S. Ryder Cup team. We’re one round into Spieth’s new chapter, and there are positives. In two weeks or two months, those positives might be easier to see. They also might be more difficult to uncover. How he approaches those moments will present the biggest hurdle yet.

“I’m trying to give myself some time,” Spieth said. “But at some point I’m going to get anxious out here if I’m not able to do consistent things.”

(Top photo: Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)