Jordan Spieth slips but stays ahead of pack of rivals

Jordan Spieth goes for a second consecutive green jacket in Sunday’s final round with a wide range of contenders on his heels, including 58-year-old two-time Masters Tournament champion Bernhard Langer.

Spieth, 22, had his second consecutive over-par round – 1-over 73 in winds that gusted to 32 mph – on Saturday and leads by one shot after dropping three shots to par in the final two holes.

Still, it is the seventh consecutive round he’s led at the Masters, breaking the record Arnold Palmer set from 1960 (all four rounds) and 1961 (the first two rounds).

He’s also only the third player to have at least a share of the 54-hole lead for three consecutive years.

Only Jack Nicklaus, Nick Faldo and Tiger Woods have won back-to-back Masters.

None of them did it in wire-to-wire fashion as Spieth would do if he pulls himself together and earns the victory.

Spieth has a one-shot lead over Masters rookie Smylie Kaufman and is two ahead of Germany’s Langer and Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama, who is 24 years old, as is Kaufman.

Spieth’s lead could have been larger, but he made bogey on No. 17 and a double bogey on No. 18 after driving it in the right trees. All his misses on the final three holes were to the right, a problem he needs to correct before he and Kaufman tee off at 2:45 p.m. Sunday.

“That wasn’t a fun last couple holes to play from the position I was in. It’s not going to be fun tonight for a little while, and hopefully I just sleep it off and it’s fine tomorrow,” said Spieth, who said he’d like to go back to his rental house after the round and “break something really quick.”

Spieth also had a poor finish Friday, playing his final three holes in 2-over. With his finishes, especially on Saturday, Spieth said that “with very little wind tomorrow, someone gets on a run and shoots 6-, 7-under, I know I have to shoot a significant under-par round tomorrow in order to win this tournament, when I could have played a different style of golf like I did on Sunday last year,” when he carried a four-shot lead into the final round.

Spieth is at 3-under 213 – 13 shots higher than he was after 54 holes last year when he ended up tying the tournament record at 18-under 270. It is the highest score to lead after 54 holes since 2007, when Stuart Appleby led with 218.

Kaufman, a former Louisiana State star, had the lone score in the 60s in the past two rounds, with a “pretty stress-free” 69 on Saturday, he said.

He could become only the fourth player to win the Masters in his debut.

“The golf course plays really hard,” Kaufman said. “I tend to play well on hard golf courses. I’m driving the ball really well right now and if I’m going to get on the greens just as much as everybody else, I think that I’ll have a pretty good opportunity to be in contention, which it doesn’t surprise me.

“I’m just kind of going with the flow and just going to try to play golf and just do the same thing I’ve been doing, try to keep to the same routine, talk out shots like I’ve been talking out shots,” he said. “Just try to stay 100 percent committed to everything I’m doing out there.”

Langer could have matched Kaufman’s score in the 60s, but he bogeyed the 18th hole and finished with 70. With a victory, Langer, who won here in 1985 and 1993, would become the oldest Masters champion by 12 years and the oldest winner of a major championship by 10.

“It would be one for the old guys,” said Langer, who has been saying for the past few years that a 50-something will win a major.

“I think it’s incredible,” Spieth said of Langer, who won three times on the PGA Tour, 42 times on the European Tour and has 26 wins on the PGA Tour Champions, including one this season.

“I would say I’m surprised except for doesn’t he win most every tournament on the Champions Tour?” asked Spieth. “We watch him all the time on TV and he’s a guy that certainly knows how to close, and close here.

“He’s a force to be reckoned with, and you can’t think of it being his age or that this is, from my perspective, you can’t think of this as an amazing story or this is his age,” Spieth said. “He’s just another competitor who’s fully capable of shooting a really solid round and winning this tournament again, which would be something afterwards.”

Langer said at his age it’s a different game at Augusta National, “but the scorecard doesn’t show it always. There’s different ways of getting there, and obviously it’s a lot easier for these young guys, hitting a lot less club into some of the greens. But when I play really, really good, when I bring my ‘A’ game, I can still compete, and even on a very long golf course like this.”

As proof that Langer has his “A” game this week, he beat his playing partner, world No. 1 Jason Day, by a shot Saturday.

“For a 58-year-old, it’s fun to be in this position and play with the best in the world,” Langer said.

Day is three shots off the lead along with Dustin Johnson and England’s Danny Willett, who both shot 72s.

Rory McIlory’s dreams of completing the career Grand Slam took a hit with 77. McIlroy, one shot off Spieth’s lead and paired with the Texan on Saturday, had three bogeys and a double bogey and didn’t make a birdie. He’s now five shots off the lead.