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CHRISTINE BRENNAN
Autism

Brennan: Jordan Spieth is Masters champion for the ages

Christine Brennan
USA TODAY Sports
Jordan Spieth celebrates on the 18th green after winning The Masters at Augusta National Golf Club.

AUGUSTA, Ga. — When Jordan Spieth won the Masters on Sunday, we won too. People who have grown sick of self-absorbed athletes won. Parents and coaches preaching sportsmanship in youth sports won. Those young athletes won, too.

They won because they witnessed something we don't see every day on our grandest cultural stages. They saw a young American, not even 22 years old, win one of the great U.S. sporting events with a kind of unspoken class and grace that would seem to come from another era.

If Spieth's victory becomes the eventual changing of the guard in American golf, it's a big win for the good guys.

Once there was another youthful American, just a few months younger at the time than Spieth is now, winning this same tournament at 18-under-par, just as Spieth did Sunday. That, of course, was Tiger Woods in 1997. Spieth doesn't succumb to the uber-fist-pumping and extracurricular swearing of Tiger, so he is far less flashy and outwardly intimidating than Woods. But he's even more impressive as a person because he knows he doesn't need the window-dressing and the nonsense to play the game. I think they call it respect.

The little things are telling with these two golf princes, separated at birth by 17½ years. This week, Tiger again showed he simply cannot stop himself from swearing into open microphones when he said a particularly bad word after a terrible snap-hook off the tee into the trees on No. 13.

A couple of hours later, Spieth made his way to No.13, to the same spot, and also hit a poor tee shot into the trees.

His epithet?

"Oh, Jordan!"

One is 39. The other is 21. I think we're trading up.

Spieth's vocabulary is as G-rated as Tiger's is not. There was a big and bold "dang it" on his tee shot at 16 Sunday. He tried to coax a few shots out of the trees this week by asking them to "get an ounce right." He failed to add the "pretty please."

Ask Spieth about this, about these conversations he has with his golf ball during every round, and he gets a bit sheepish.

"I don't really try to," he said. "I mean, I guess it's just the competitor in me, just wanting it sometimes. I'd like to think I don't do it the most of anybody, but if that's the case, then maybe I should dial it down a little bit."

Tiger would never, ever, ever say that.

Then there's the way Spieth treats his opponents, which is decidedly old school. He gave a big thumbs up to playing partner Justin Rose for a shot Rose hit on the seventh hole Sunday that allowed him to shave a stroke off Spieth's lead.

"Well," Spieth explained, "it's how the game was founded. It's a game of integrity. There's no referees out there. We all respect each other."

There also was Spieth's new TV commercial. Tiger's commercials were always about Tiger, which is really not all that unusual. That's the way it is with most superstar athletes. Spieth's? The one that was airing between his shots Sunday was the AT&T commercial about not texting while driving, the kind of commercial any mother loves.

Both of Spieth's parents were college athletes, as is his brother. His 14-year-old sister, Ellie, was born with a neurological disorder that places her on the autism spectrum. He has thrown himself into Special Olympics in her honor, saying, "For me, what I do on the course I want to be secondary to what I do off the course."

In some ways, there seems to be a little Phil Mickelson in Spieth.

"He's just a classy guy," Mickelson said of Spieth on Saturday. "He just represents the game very well and at a very young age, and he's just got a lot of game. So if he were to come out on top, it would be wonderful for the tournament, wonderful for the game."

He did come out on top, beating Phil and Rose by four shots. One never knows what the future holds for anyone, even someone who appears so genuine and real and grounded as Jordan Spieth.

But for now, we'll take this.

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