Jordan Spieth is in the midst of putting together his best season in years. The three-time major champion entered the 2025 Travelers Championship this week with four top-10 finishes on the PGA Tour this season alongside his two best finishes in major championships (T14 at the Masters, T23 at the US Open) in more than two years. However, this week’s tournament in Connecticut has put a road block in the way of his trek to the United States Ryder Cup team as Spieth was forced to withdraw from a PGA Tour event for the first time in his career with an upper back injury.
Spieth had played through a wrist injury the last couple of years but finally opted for surgery that helped him get back to feeling like his old self. Trending in the right direction and making progress towards a selection onto the United States’ Ryder Cup team, Spieth recently spoke with CBS Sports’ Patrick McDonald about finding his form and working his way out of bad habits he developed while playing with the wrist injury.
Now a hitch has developed in that recovery. Spieth withdrew Thursday after a 5 over start thru 12 holes at the Travelers, grabbing at his neck area and dropping his club on his followthrough a number of times during the front nine.
This is not something he indicated was bothering him during the U.S. Open at Oakmont. Spieth appeared to be in good spirits arriving in Connecticut this week. However, the neck seemed to flare up during his warmup, and while he tried to play through it, he was clearly uncomfortable. Eventually, the pain he was experiencing became too much to play through.
“Everything was great in my gym session, and I’ve been very, very excited to go out and play,” Spieth said after his withdrawal. “Things have been getting better and better, and then my right [scapula] just kind of locked — like tightened midway through the warmup, and I just kept hitting, and then all of a sudden it was moving up, everything around it started to … so I stopped. It was both sides of my neck and upper back. … I just wasn’t moving very well, and then it just got worse.”
It is the first time Spieth has withdrawn from a tournament in 297 PGA Tour starts.
Whether this will impact Spieth in the long term remains to be seen, but fans have enjoyed seeing him bounce back on leaderboards and keep his name in the conversation at significant events. He seems optimistic this will clear up sooner than later, but is unsurprisingly frustrated to have this issue arise early in the final signature event of the year.
“I’ve never withdrawn from an event ever anywhere at any level, so I didn’t really know what to do,” Spieth said. “It just became too much. I didn’t see it turning around until probably Saturday. These things kind of last an extra day, and no matter what I was going to do, it was just going to be — I don’t know, it’s unfortunate. I’ve been doing everything right, and I think it was just very random.”
With The Open Championship at Royal Portrush in a month, Spieth will certainly attempt to be back healthy for the year’s final major as he continues to make his case for Keegan Bradley to put him on the U.S. Ryder Cup team at Bethpage Black this fall.