Jordan Spieth wins Australian Open after playoff with Cameron Smith and Ash Hall

Jordan Spieth has claimed his second Australian Open title after beating Cameron Smith and Ashley Hall in a playoff at Royal Sydney.

All week, golf experts and players have been referring to Jordan Spieth as the ultimate ‘scorer’ – someone who still seems to post a good score when not playing at his best golf.

This proved to be exactly the case at Royal Sydney today when Jordan Spieth squeezed out a great victory, beating Australian’s Cameron Smith and Ashley Hall to claim his second Australian Open trophy.

Spieth, Smith and Hall were forced to play extra hole to decide the winner of the Stonehaven Cup after all three players finished in a tie for the lead at 12-under par.

All three players found the fairway, with Cameron Smith getting a lucky break after his ball clipped a tree.

Spieth was first to play and had the huge crowd around the 18th green at Royal Sydney in raptures as his approach shot settled 10-feet below the hole.

Victorian Ashley Hall, ranked 902nd in the world golf rankings went one better and hit his approach inside Spieth’s to around 8-feet, but arguably left with a trickier putt.

After taking a lucky break after his drive clipped a tree, Cameron Smith’s approach was perfectly straight at the pin but failed to get on to the top-tier of the tricky 18th green at Royal Sydney. It ultimately left Smith with a very difficult putt to hole and could only manage a par.

Spieth showed his class and nailed his relatively straight putt for birdie, leaving Hall with the biggest putt of his career.

Hall’s slippery putt slipped by the hole leaving Jordan Spieth to have his name etched into the Stonehaven Trophy for a second time.

Ominously, the last time Jordan Spieth won five times in the seven months including two majors – the 2015 Masters and US Open.

Earlier in the day, it appeared as though Geoff Ogilvy would etch his name into the trophy a second time after taking a three shot lead after chipping in for eagle at the par-5 7th hole.

But two bogeys in the next two holes saw Ogilvy slip back to the pack of chasing players. A disastrous double-bogey at the par-16th all but sealed his fate after having to play out of the trees twice.

As Ryan Fox, Rod Pampling, Jason Scrivener and Venezuelan Jhonattan Vegas put themselves into a position to make a run to the top of the leaderboard, it was 21-year-old Cameron Smith who came roaring to the top with three consecutive birdies after the turn and only a bogey at the last marred an otherwise fantastic round of golf to get himself into the playoff.

Victorian Ashley Hall also surprised everyone. His final round 6-under 66 was polished off with a superb birdie at the difficult final hole that earned his spot in the playoff.

Spieth was determined to fight his way to the end though. After some bad luck at the 7th hole where the American’s bunker shots hit the pin and ricocheted back off the green, Spieth made bogey another bogey at the 8th hole and his day looked done.

But the former world number one showed his class and hung in there. When he nailed this bomb on the 16th hole, the roars could be heard around Royal Sydney and few doubted he could win the Australian Open again.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *