Jordan Spieth hasn’t found his form of old in recent seasons and with a Ryder Cup coming up this year at Bethpage, it looks very much like he might miss out.
Spieth has still not won on the PGA Tour in over three seasons now and despite a few glimpses of form in 2025, he’s not been able to get things over the line.
His good friend Justin Thomas has broken his own duck of needing a win and now looks a lock to make a fourth Ryder Cup appearance.
Of course, one of those appearances came in 2018, when Team USA lost out to Team Europe at Le Golf National.
With Jim Furyk as captain, the US flopped badly and some partnerships came under intense scrutiny.
Indeed, at the time and when analysing those potential partnerships, Jordan Spieth had his say on things.
Photo by Warren Little/Getty ImagesWhat Jordan Spieth said about Ryder Cup partnerships and Bryson DeChambeau
Speaking after the Ryder Cup in 2018, Spieth was asked about playing with certain players in the competition and if it made much difference to him.
However, for Spieth, he insisted it mattered little as long as everyone wanted to win and when it came to Bryson DeChambeau, he’d love to be on the same team as someone who drives it so well.
“I don’t mind. Those events I want to win them as badly as I want to win any event that I play in. It is shown by raw emotion that I show in those events. At the same time when I get done with them I want to be like it was awesome to play with all these different, phenomenal, Hall of Fame players in Ryder Cups.
The next one I might be like it would be so cool to play with Collin Morikawa or Matt Wolff, whoever it may be. That is just how I look at those events,” Spieth said.
“If someone was like Bryson wants to play with you, you would be like okay I will play with those drives absolutely. Everybody there you are going to have just as good as a chance of winning with. These are the best players in the world.
“So you can’t say that I want to play with this guy, especially in a best ball format. Alternate shot there is some stuff that goes into it, you want it to mesh and be on the right page reading putts.
“But best ball it’s like you are one of the best in the world, I am one of the best in the world, why are you going to read your putts or you read my putts? Let’s just go and shoot a good score and beat these guys.”
Why Patrick Reed was unhappy with Jordan Spieth after the Ryder Cup
We all know the American team is full of passion and they don’t come much more passionate than ‘Captain America’ himself, Patrick Reed.
Reed had formed a good partnership with Spieth but in 2018, that was ripped away in what Reed determined was a decision based on friendships and not winning.
However, Spieth offered up his own take on that after Reed criticised him being put with his best pal Justin Thomas.
“2015 at the Presidents Cup in Korea and Jay Haas was their captain and he came at that point to me and said who do you want to play with this week? He was like you are leading the team, who do you want to play with? I said I want to play with Patrick. We have had success last year at the Ryder Cup. I would love to play a round with DJ, I think that would be so much fun. I have battled with DJ more than I have anyone else on the PGA Tour and I have loved it,” Spieth explained.
“I have played more rounds in my career with him than anyone else so I was like I’ll play with DJ this would be awesome, I would love playing from his drives and he would have to play from mine and be like I don’t really want to hit seven iron!
“Anyway, the point being I had already played with DJ some and then I played with Patrick later in the week. He had told me he made a birdie and came over and was like that’s what you get for playing with DJ. We had both made eight birdies through 15 holes and destroyed whoever we were playing but it was almost like I had fired him up more playing with somebody else.”
Speaking directly on the link up with Thomas, Spieth continued.
“I grew up with Justin, he is one of my best friends in the entire world. I grew up since we were 13 together. We have been the biggest fans of each other through our entire process of junior golf, college golf, professional golf into winning major championships.
“It’s like being number one in the world, we have accomplished these massive goals we set out when we were 13 at Mansfield. We were paired there and that’s where we met. So obviously I want to play with him, this would be so awesome.
“The team room was fine. We all had people we were going to play with. I think when we were getting ready for the tournament it was myself, Tiger, Justin and Patrick which was — to play in a pod with Tiger in a Ryder Cup, you might be paired with him, even if we knew it was going to be Justin’s partner if I played with Patrick and then Patrick and Tiger might play together.
“Second of all I also didn’t think it would be a big deal if I played with Justin and Patrick got Tiger. It did not seem like that would be something that would upset people. So it was just part of the pod, or fire team or whatever it was called. For me it was mainly like we had grown up together, we had accomplished these goals together and we are finally at the coolest stage in golf at the Ryder Cup, let’s go out and kick some a—- together. That is what we wanted to do.
“But everything was fine. Nothing was a big deal. There was things that were raised afterwards and Patrick and I have been awesome since. It really was blown out for six months and other than that it has been nothing.”
With such a big Ryder Cup coming up for Keegan Bradley and Team USA after their humiliation in Rome in 2023, they need the best team spirit possible.
So far, Bradley is doing a good job of garnering that and experiences like this from Spieth and Reed will no doubt go some way into helping Bradley’s final decision making.