Even Jordan Spieth didn't really know how to feel about his opening round at the 2024 Valero Texas Open.
The three-time Major champion was adamant he was playing good golf but the numbers on his scorecard were not reflective of that quality as he finished Thursday at one-over.
After bogeying the first, Spieth bogeyed four more holes, birdied four, made a par six times, pencilled down a seven on the penultimate par-five, and aced the iconic 'donut hole' on 16. So, make sense of that.
Reflecting on the round as a whole afterwards, Spieth felt he "drove the living piss out of the ball" at TPC San Antonio's Oaks Course and called his recent overall form "bizarre."
He said: "It's just like, I'm playing so much better than I've been scoring and it doesn't like look like it. It's hard to explain. I've played way worse and had consecutive top-10s than the missed cuts that I've had. It's just very bizarre.
Here's Jordan Spieth talking about the "bizarre" nature of his game at the moment. Noted that he "drove the living piss out of the ball today." pic.twitter.com/xvHFfYSEoCApril 5, 2024
"Like, my game feels fine and I'm just not getting much out of it. So it's extremely frustrating because I drove the living piss out of the ball today and I picked the wrong line on 14, and it's the one drive I missed honestly like five, six yards right of where I was looking and then I don't find it.
"I was like, see, now my driving stats don't look the way they actually feel and I'm 4 over. I'm like, this is not a hard track this afternoon, what in the world is going on? I got a couple nice breaks late that maybe make me feel like the game's not as hard as it's been feeling."
One of those "nice breaks" was a hole-in-one on the iconic par-3 16th. Spieth's tee shot never left the flag, bouncing just above and to the left of the unique sand trap that sits in the middle of the putting surface before taking a couple of bounces and rolling into the cup.
It was a shot that, if circumstances had been different, would have ended in a very different location.
Spieth explained that the only reason he was able to celebrate the ace was due to the fact that he put a new seven-iron into the bag this week, but only that one club.
Watch: Jordan Spieth Hole-In-One
🚨 SPIETH ACE 🚨@JordanSpieth makes a hole-in-one on the 199-yard par-3 16th hole @ValeroTXOpen.(Presented by @CocaCola) pic.twitter.com/kHZKIxKiIZApril 4, 2024
The 30-year-old explained: "It's actually a brand new 7-iron this week, only the 7-iron. I like hitting my 7-iron and so I've got it to where, when I'm testing my gaps, it like goes five yards too far in the gap. I didn't know why.
"On Wednesday after the pro-am I was hitting on the back of the range, I had them just bring a brand new 7-iron for new grooves and it was up in the right spin window, so knocked four, five yards off of it. If I didn't change 7-irons yesterday, then I wouldn't have made it. It's funny."
Spieth will continue his pursuit of overnight leader Akshay Bhatia - who recorded a stunning nine-under first round - on Friday at 8:04am CDT (2:04pm BST) alongside Hideki Matsuyama (+1) and Lucas Glover (-2).
