Jordan Spieth Fears 150th Open Could Be A 'Wedge Contest'

Jordan Spieth has admitted the 150th Open at St Andrews could be reduced to a "wedge contest" if conditions are benign on the Fife coast when the world's best roll into the Home of Golf next week.

The three-time Major winner has joined an ever-growing list of big names to cite concerns about the challenge posed by the Old Course in an era dominated by mammoth driving distances that has rendered a number of iconic venues obsolete.

After a first-round 68 at the Scottish Open, Spieth was asked if the famous St Andrews layout is "too easy", saying: "Yeah, I think it might be. You know, it's hard for me to tell given 2015 we had so much wind that we couldn't even play. But I think if it's like it was this morning out here, it's just a wedge contest, really.

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"The back nine just doesn't show the same teeth that it normally does with this wind - makes it pretty easy for six, seven holes. You normally have to hold on for dear life on the back but if that wind is down on the back, all of a sudden you've created a few more birdie holes."

Spieth went on to say the course "was not necessarily built for today's technology," so what, then, would the Texan like to see when he gets his bid for a fourth Major underway?

"I think that even a nice ten to 15 miles an hour [wind] would show something to it and the fact that it doesn't look like we are going to get any rain, so I think the defence could be how fast it plays.

"It could get like Muirfield was in 2013, and I think that regardless of wind conditions, that would change the golf course significantly and make it challenging to hold fairways and greens.

"I'm somebody who believes that courses are designed to play from certain places each hole, and it's nice when that's how you play them because that was the design of it. To hit that shot from that distance to a green that is receptive to that distance or that difficult because it's such a short shot. 

"I've always been somebody who thinks of it like we're hitting some of the shots they just couldn't do even 30 years ago, let alone 130 years ago."

Spieth hasn't been back to St Andrews since missing out on the playoff in 2015 by a single shot as he attempted to win the first three Majors of the year. He made amends in 2017 at Royal Birkdale but admitted there would be nothing like lifting the Claret Jug at the Home of Golf.

"I think the history of it, playing in the town, the idea that it could be the easiest or the hardest venue that we play depending on the day. Maybe it's just I remember watching certain ones growing up, and so the holes, the kind of scenic holes starting and finishing you really kind of hold onto.

"The Open at St Andrews is arguably the best golf tournament we play."