Jordan Spieth is enjoying the warmer weather as he ramps up his return from wrist surgery at this week's Cognizant Classic in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.
Spieth said on Tuesday that he decided to play in the event for the first time to thaw out and to test his fitness on the challenging track at the PGA National Champion Course.
"Yeah, we came off a deep freeze in Dallas last week, and we decided that was enough of that," said the three-time major winner. "I'm excited to be here."
Spieth underwent surgery in August on his left wrist, which had bothered him since at least May 2023.
He returned to action at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and then tied for fourth at the WM Phoenix Open in Scottsdale, Arizona, before missing the cut at The Genesis Invitational.
"I missed the first month of the season. I just wasn't ready to play any of those events yet. And it was really nice to get back and then even to get into contention one week," he said.
"My goal now, as we look towards the Masters, is to try to play difficult golf courses and work my way into contention and just see what I can improve upon by the time we get to Augusta."
Spieth talked at length about his recovery period, acknowledging that there is still more work to do.
"It was a unique experience that I don't wish upon anybody, and hope I don't have to go through again. But I had a great team around me that, you know, I had directions in place that, you know, what could have been an eight-week recovery, was pushed to 12, that turned into really 16 before full go, for no other reason than just to let everything heal and take away the 1 per cent chance that anything bad could happen.
"... It's not normal. I don't wake up in the morning and my two hands feel the same by any means. But by the time I get going, the idea is that once I tee off on the first hole, I don't think about it all day, and I was able to do that, for the most part, in the last three weeks. There was a couple stretches here and there where it bothered me, but from the guys I talked to that have had similar operations, that's normal, and about the year mark is when they really started to forget about it."
A 13-time winner on the PGA Tour, Spieth has slipped to No 70 in the Official World Golf Ranking. His last title came at the RBC Heritage in April 2022.
Spieth, 31, faces an unfamiliar course this week.
"I can't remember the last time I played an event that I hadn't played before," he said.
"You've got to drive the ball, obviously, precise, but tough golf courses in the wind on Bermuda, that's kind of what I grew up on."