US PGA Championship: Jordan Spieth's 'laborious' route back to top not rooted in money but glory

Spieth's early successes came on the back of his putting but that aspect of his game is now regarded as his weak point

Listening to Greg Norman it is easy to conclude that golf is fundamentally about money and that not much matters beyond that.

Suggesting we all make mistakes, while trying to brush off the murder in 2018 of dissident Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, was as crass a gaffe as could be imagined.

But at its heart was a notion that it was more important to consider the £1.6bn of Saudi cash being ploughed into the sport through Norman's LIV Golf Investments and how it is helping the Australian's stated aim of "growing the game".

One of the most striking things that he said in an interview with BBC Sport was that a young amateur could play and earn vast sums from his £20m opening event at the Centurion Club in Hertfordshire next month.

To justify the instant financial gratification his tournament could offer, Norman said players would not have "to go through the laborious process of Monday qualifying to get on the Korn Ferry Tour to then get on the PGA Tour".

In other words, someone can get filthy rich without having to prove themselves by scaling the golfing pyramid, which is a tacit acknowledgment that his forthcoming series of lucrative invitational tournaments rather lack sporting integrity.

This is not something we can say of the event at the heart of golfing attention this week. The US PGA Championship offers genuine golfing history and American Jordan Spieth can cement his place among the greats of the game.

Priceless, as they say.

At Southern Hills in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the 28-year-old Texan will make his sixth attempt to complete the career Grand Slam of winning all four major titles. And he goes into the second men's major of the year in form that suggests it is possible.

Since missing the cut at last month's Masters, Spieth has been beaten by only one player - KH Lee, who pipped the three times major champion at last week's Byron Nelson in his home state of Texas.

Spieth won at Hilton Head immediately after his Augusta disappointment and emerged from the low-scoring Nelson feeling he had let slip a good opportunity to go back-to-back and claim his 14th PGA Tour victory.

"It was a good week, good momentum into next week," Spieth said. "But this one will sting just a little bit, looking back on the day."

It is a measure of how well Spieth has rebuilt his long game that it is his putting that is now regarded as the weak link in his armoury. There is often a chance of a short one slipping by at an inopportune moment.

But if he can find the efficiency on the greens that was the hallmark of his successes when he romped to the 2015 Masters and US Open titles, as well as The Open two years later, he will take some stopping in Tulsa.

"We'll get on greens next week that remind me a lot of Colonial," Spieth noted after his final round last Sunday, referring to the success he has enjoyed at the Fort Worth course, including a tour win in 2016.

"It's bentgrass, which is gradual slope where you don't have a lot of tricks, which I think will be nice and I gained a lot of confidence on the greens this week," he added.

Although he burst onto the professional scene in spectacular style, Spieth took no short cuts to success. He claimed junior amateur honours, success at NCAA level and rose to the world number one spot on the amateur world rankings.

He turned professional in 2012 despite making it to the final stage of PGA Tour school and made a stuttering start in the big league the following year before, just prior to his 20th birthday, sensationally claiming the John Deere Classic in the July.

In 2014 he was runner up at the Masters, going one better to land his first major 12 months later, with the US Open following in June.

It looked as though he would become the game's dominant force. He went close at The Open, missing out on a play-off by one shot, and then became world number one after finishing second at the US PGA Championship to cap a sensational year.

But after winning the 2017 Open his game started to fall apart. He failed to make the 2019 US Presidents Cup team and his ranking tumbled as low as 82nd in the world.

For a while he seemed in freefall and an uncomfortable spotlight shone on someone whose greatness had been enveloped by the capricious vulnerabilities that can strike even the most talented golfers.

The way that Spieth has recovered is one of the great golfing stories of the past year. Unlike the way that he burst onto the scene, it has been incremental progress and the product of hard graft on the range as much as raw talent.

His win at last year's Texas Open was widely celebrated as confirmation that he was back and now with first and second place finishes in his past two events he rides into the PGA ranked eighth in the world, his highest standing since 2018.

To use Norman's words, it has been "a laborious process" but from that comes golfing glory.

Now Spieth tees it up in a PGA field minus the defending champion Phil Mickelson - unable yet to face the golfing public after his destructive comments surrounding Norman's Saudi project.

Tiger Woods will be there and it will be fascinating to track his physical progress following his comeback at the Masters as he takes on the course where he won the PGA the last time it was played there in 2007.

Will Rory McIlroy - the subject of the first All About The Open golf podcast exclusively on BBC Sounds - be able to build on his Masters runner-up finish?

And how will world number one Scottie Scheffler react to playing his first major since claiming the famous Green Jacket last month?

These are all key questions to be answered this week in Oklahoma - but over and above them all is the one surrounding Spieth.

Will he join that most exclusive of clubs - occupied only by Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Ben Hogan and Gene Sarazen in winning all four men's majors?

That's the stuff of sporting glory. That's what excites fans and, refreshingly, no-one will be talking about money.