DUBLIN, Ohio -- It was just before noon on an unseasonably crisp June morning when Jordan Spieth finally figured out his golf swing.
This was Tuesday, two days before the opening round of the Memorial Tournament, and the Masters champion was practicing on the right side of the expansive Muirfield Village driving range. He pulled his cell phone out of his golf bag and handed it to caddie Michael Greller. The former schoolteacher crouched behind him and pressed the record button as Spieth launched a towering iron shot into the cavernous sky. Then he handed over the results.
Spieth pressed play and a slight smile emerged across his lips.
"That's it right there," he proclaimed. "That's the best swing since Augusta."
For all of the consternation over all of the contemplation that Tiger Woods and other struggling golfers seem to have in regard to changing their swings, it often goes unnoticed or maybe just overlooked that golfers who are prospering similarly continue making tweaks to their move through the ball.
Spieth didn't go from winning the Masters in April and start cruising. He finished one stroke out of a playoff two weeks ago at the Crowne Plaza Invitational at Colonial and a respectable 30th place last week at the AT&T Byron Nelson. But still seeking to unlock some hidden secret on the range, he'd been waiting for that eureka moment, the one which unfolded through the video on his phone.
Just in case we were to accuse him of hyperbole -- or even worse, trying to fix something that wasn't broken -- Spieth employed that swing change while posting a 4-under 68 during Thursday's opening round, just 4 strokes behind early pacesetters Bo Van Pelt and Hideki Matsuyama.
"We started to get it back to where my transition is a lot simpler from backswing to downswing," he explained. "It makes me a whole lot more comfortable, especially striking it with my longer clubs."
For the most part, Spieth appeared more comfortable in the first round, recording five birdies and a dozen pars, many of those the treacherous up-and-down variety which are usually so sparse on this demanding course.
Immediately afterward, though, he remained more consumed with the day's lone bogey than any of the other 17 holes.
Confused by a shifting wind, Spieth had 233 yards to the flag on the par-5 seventh -- his 16th hole of the day. Rather than stepping away and reassessing the situation, he took a mighty lash with a hybrid club that landed in the right rough, well short of the green. From there, he fluffed a wedge shot into the front bunker, then failed to produce another up-and-down, resulting in the lone 6 on his scorecard.
"Just kind of compounding bad breaks, which led to 6 shots on that hole, where really it should be 4 -- and it's 4 from that shot on the fairway more than half the time," he said, shaking his head. "Tough finish to swallow after such a great round of golf. But still in a good position."
We can blame -- or, in the most optimistic belief, credit -- his insistence to initially focus on the sole negative score from his round on his unique talents or his stubbornness. Really, it's a measure of his perfectionist attitude, the one trait which elevated him to this lofty status in the first place.
It is Spieth's position as a perfectionist which allowed him to win the Masters, but the same personality trait which forces him to continue trying to improve in the aftermath.
Every professional golfer does it, too. Some fail, at least at first. Woods has imposed as many swing changes on his game as anybody during the past two decades. The latest iteration produced an erratic 1-over 73 on Thursday, on the heels of other celebrated struggles. Others succeed right away, inserting tweaks into their games without any issue.
And then there are those like Spieth, who continually try to improve, promoting changes within their games without the outside world ever being aware.
He allowed that his eureka moment on the range earlier this week, the slight smile while checking his swing on video, wasn't simply a revelation. It came after working with Dallas-based instructor Cameron McCormick for much of the past week, but those results finally emerged in an instant.
There's a lesson in there somewhere, not for Spieth, but for anyone who criticizes a professional golfer for trying to improve.
Though there might be some lean moments before any changes click, his opening-round 68 after rediscovering his swing should serve as proof yet again that a player can't move forward while standing still. And that sometimes a secret can be unlocked on a practice range during an unseasonably crisp Tuesday morning in June.
