Jordan Spieth of the United States reacts on the 17th tee during the third round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am at Pebble Beach Golf Links on February 13, 2021 in Pebble Beach, California. (Photo by Steph Chambers/Getty Images)

When it comes to Major winners who’ve struggled with their games, Jordan Spieth ranks right up there in the Hall of Fame.

He’s not a Bill Rogers or an Ian Baker-Finch, who won The Open and quickly lost form in devastating fashion. Nor is he injury-hit, like 1996 US Open winner Steve Jones or the 2001 Open champion David Duval, who never reached those heights again.

But having won three Majors in his first 20 Major starts and racked up 14 worldwide wins by the age of 23, the former world number one’s career was on a Hall of Fame trajectory until he flew into the side of the mountain.

He only recently arrested what looked like an inevitable exit from the world’s top 100 when he shot a 61 in the third round of the Waste Management Phoenix Open nine days ago.

And while he could not clinch a fairytale win, finishing two shots behind Brooks Koepka in a tie for fourth, his flashes of brilliance in forging a two-stroke lead heading into last night’s final round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am would indicate that rumours of his demise are very much exaggerated.

The past three-and-a-half years have been a living nightmare for the Texan (27), whose ball-striking and even his putting has suffered indescribably since his most recent win at the 2017 Open Championship.

"I sometimes wish he would just go hit balls alone,” Duval said last year when watching Spieth take multiple looks from ball to target as he struggled to take the club away during last year’s US Open. “He's playing golf swing right now. He needs to go out and play golf.”

Duval was one of the first to spot signs of tension in Spieth in early as 2016, when the youngster captured the Masters and the US Open, then almost won The Open and the PGA Championship and decided he needed to pick up a few extra yards.

“When we got done talking at the end of the year in 2015 after that historic season he had, one thing I said and cautioned him and hoped he wouldn’t do was chase distance,” Duval recalled. “He came back in 2016 saying he was trying to find five or 10 yards in the offseason and I was like: ‘oh boy.’”

Jordan Spieth of the United States looks on from the seventh tee during the third round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am at Pebble Beach Golf Links on February 13, 2021 in Pebble Beach, California. (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)

Spieth still won three times in 2016, though his Masters collapse left a scar. He also won another three times in 2017 but as the big hitters took a stranglehold on the game, his troubles with ball-striking grew exponentially and he fell from second in the tee-to-green charts in 2017 to 161st in 2020.

He’s called on Butch Harmon for help in him and his coach Cameron McCormick and given his recent encouraging form, rivals such as Rory McIlroy are looking forward to his return to golf’s top table.

“I think from a viewership point of view, it definitely gets everyone excited,” McIlroy said in Phoenix, recalling Spieth’s Saturday afternoon desert fireworks. “It was awesome to see him back to sort of the—not the old Jordan because he's only like 27 or something—but back to showing us what he can do.”

Winning is never easy and as Spieth continues his journey back from the doldrums, he at least recognises it will never be easy.

"I think my nerves will be there the same as they were last Sunday, the same they were today,” he said at Pebble Beach on Saturday night. “It's not going to be the most comfortable feeling to start out, but it never is. I can't speak about one time that I stood on the first tee on a Sunday with the lead and felt super, super comfortable.”

In that sense, Spieth’s struggles are no different to those of 2011 Amateur champion Bryden Macpherson, who claimed his maiden win on the ISPS HANDA PGA Tour of Australasia last week when he closed with an eight-under par 64 to win the Moonah Links PGA Classic in his homeland late last week.

“As I’ve grown up and spent time around lots and lots of people in lots and lots of places I’ve learned that, as cliche and terrible as it sounds, you’ve just got to stay with what you’re doing,” said Macpherson, expressing sentiments familiar to those experiences by Spieth over the the past 1303 days.