With just over $520,000 in earnings on the PGA Tour this year, Jordan Spieth isn’t doing too bad for a 19-year old that dropped out of college after his freshman year at the University of Texas.
Earlier this month at the Puerto Rico Open he finished 2nd and three weeks ago at the Tampa Bay Championship he finished 7th. In doing so, he’s earned himself a special temporary membership to the PGA Tour, which allows him to receive an unlimited amount of sponsored exemptions into PGA events.
Basically this means that Spieth doesn’t actually have to play his way into these tournaments (which requires him to finish well in previous tournaments). And because he has essentially become the face of young and upcoming professional golfers, getting exemptions to these tournaments will not be a problem.
Born just under 20 years ago in 1993, Spieth has been part of some pretty elite company throughout his golfing career. And by pretty elite I mean he and Tiger Woods are the only golfers on Earth to win the U.S. Junior Amateur multiple times.
In 2009 the AJGA named him the Rolex Junior Player of the Year and one year later he was awarded an amateur exemption to the HP Byron Nelson Championship, once again joining only Tiger Woods, Justin Leonard and Trip Kuehne as the only other players to receive exemptions.
Spieth further boosted his resume by getting a spot in the 2012 U.S. Open at Olympic Club after Brandt Snedeker withdrew. And while playing in the U.S. Open as an 18 year old would have been good enough for any other teenager, Spieth went a step further and finished in a tie for 21st, earning him low amateur honors. Other accomplishments of Jordan include a spot on the 2011 Walker Cup Team, All-American honors as a freshman at Texas and a spot as the No. 1 ranked amateur golfer in the entire world.
Jordan Spieth clearly has shown that he has both the mental and physical game to compete with even the best professionals and the fact that he’s only 19 years old is rather scary in terms of his potential.
His amateur career has been rivaled by a very small number of previous golfers including Tiger and Rory, and we’ve both seen what they’ve been able to accomplish. Bottom line, Spieth isn’t going anywhere. We’ll be seeing his name on leaderboards all over the country for many years to come.