Jordan Spieth is ready to follow his instincts and end a year without titles by retaining the Open

One keepsake doing the rounds at Carnoustie this week is a metal ball-marker inscribed with the message “Go Get That!” Those, you might recall, were the words that Jordan Spieth barked at caddie Michael Greller, having sunk a mammoth eagle putt to electrify the Royal Birkdale crowd and turbo-charge his surge towards a maiden Claret Jug.

In a sense, it was a very un-Spieth-like moment, given the golfer’s reputation for impeccable Texan manners. But this cheeky order to his bagman, who dutifully collected his ball from the cup, perhaps best captured the adrenalin of a thrilling back nine that left him just one leg short of a career Grand Slam.

Twelve months on, Spieth arrives on the Angus coast in the unfamiliar position of not having won a title of any kind since. For all the pyrotechnics of his closing 64 at Augusta this year, he has otherwise drifted into a strange funk by his standards, trying, in his words, “to make everything perfect, instead of trusting the way I normally play”. And if the sheer chutzpah of his Birkdale triumph taught us anything, as he blazed through the final five holes in five under despite taking an unplayable drop at the 13th, it was that Spieth was never more lethal than when relying on instinct alone.

There are extenuating circumstances to Spieth’s fallow period. Last December, he contracted mononucleosis, and his subsequent struggle for energy set back his preparations for the season. His first day back at the Open, though, could hardly fail to invigorate him.

While just 13 in 2008, the last time the tournament was held here at Carnoustie, he could scarcely hide his glee at the first sight of this parched links ‒ not least when he found a spot in the cycle park set aside especially for the “champion golfer of the year”. “It’s a title that’s very cool,” he smiled. “It has been an honour to be introduced like that at different events. It brings some chills.”

On their private jet home from Liverpool to Dallas last summer, he and his close friend Justin Thomas, who would go on to win the USPGA three weeks later, posted pictures of themselves drinking from the Claret Jug like frat-boys on spring break. It was quite a wrench yesterday, then, for Spieth to go through the customary ritual of handing the trophy back to the R&A. “At first it didn’t really hit me,” he said. “I thought maybe somebody would meet me in the parking lot, I would just give them the case back, and we would move on. But it was a ceremony and, because of that, it hit me harder. I took it to all the places that allowed me to get to where I am today. So, having to return it was certainly difficult.”

With fairways baked hard by this extended high summer, Spieth has the guile and ingenuity to reclaim custody of his most cherished possession come Sunday night. If Brooks Koepka can win successive US Opens on courses as diverse as Erin Hills and Shinnecock Hills, then Spieth is quite capable of doing to Carnoustie what he did to the finishing holes at Birkdale. To put himself in the right mood, he has taken some time off, spending a holiday with friends in Baja California and attending the Special Olympics USA Games in Seattle, where his sister Ellie ‒ who was born with a neurological disorder ‒ was a cheerleader. “After a couple of weeks away, it was nice to have the itch to get back,” he said. “It could start from scratch with parts of my game, almost like wet concrete.”

In a broader context, Spieth’s recent dip matters little in any judgments on his body of work. At 24, he has already amassed 11 tour victories. Only Tiger Woods had more at the same stage. But still, there is the nagging sense with Spieth that an entire year without silverware represents a chastening failure. Ever since he started winning national amateur titles as a 12-year-old, he has been hailed for his precocity, his distinction as a serial winner. But of late, he has looked unusually ragged, missing the cut at the US Open, his first such lapse at a major for three years, with his exacting pre-shot routines more ponderous than ever. The choice he would face here, as he put it, was to be either an artist or a technician. “Probably more artist,” he decided, eventually. Spieth could have no finer canvas than Carnoustie.