British Open leaderboard and scores 2017: Jordan Spieth blows lead, charges back for wild wire-to-wire win

Jordan Spieth put on a show for the ages down the stretch of Sunday’s British Open finale.

Jordan Spieth early into Sunday’s final round tried to give away the British Open. But the 54-hole leader put a dismal start behind him as he won the British Open by three shots over Matt Kuchar to become the second-youngest player to win three legs of the career grand slam.

Only Jack Nicklaus, at 23, lifted the Claret Jug at an earlier age than Spieth, who will turn 24 on Thursday and finished with a 1-under 69 and 12-under for the tourney.

In a two-player race reminiscent of last year’s Henrik Stenson-Phil Mickelson Open Championship duel, Spieth and Kuchar battled for supremacy on a wild Sunday finale in which Spieth could not find the fairway with his driver or the bottom of the cup with his putter until he put the contest out of reach with a truly insane stretch drive.

The craziness started with a wild drive some 100 yards to the right of the fairway by Spieth on 13 that necessitated a search party, which eventually found his errant ball, but the fun was just beginning.

Thirty minutes after teeing off and taking an unplayable lie, getting line-of-sight relief following an in-depth inspection of the area by Spieth and his caddie Michael Greller, and chipping up to a putt of a length that had bedeviled him all day, Spieth made an all-world bogey.

Still, it was advantage Kuchar.

But not for long, as it took Spieth just five minutes to make a birdie on the par-3 14th after nearly nearly holing his tee shot and retake the lead following Kuchar’s par on 14.

Then, as if things weren’t crazy enough, Spieth drained a huge eagle putt on 15 that elicited an epic reaction from the tourney leader and sent Twitter into a tizzy.

Before all the fireworks and prior to the leaders starting their last round, their challengers, one by one, faded away or, in some cases, bombed their way out of contention.

Dustin Johnson and Hideki Matsuyama ended their Open stints on the first hole of Sunday’s finale. DJ, never a factor after going 71-72-64 in his first three rounds, made a double on the first after finding a pot bunker off the tee and had to swipe it out sideways. Matsuyama (even-par after three rounds) got off to a wretched start when he lost his drive out of bounds on No. 1, ranked the hardest hole of the final round, and ended up with a triple bogey-7.

Meanwhile, Rory McIlroy was finally putting some pressure on the leaders until a lost ball off the 15th tee seemed to end his Open challenge. An eagle on the the par-5 17th, though, got McIlroy back to 5-under for the week and back into contention — until he failed to hole a bunker shot on 18 for a birdie and finished at 5-under for the week, one shot behind Haotong Li.

Speaking of Li, the Chinese golfer previously known for a video of his mother fishing his putter out of the drink at the French Open, posted the round of the day with a sizzling Sunday-best 63 that gave the 21-year-old an unlikely third-place finish.

But the day belonged to Spieth, who finished birdie-eagle-birdie-birdie-par and will head into next month’s PGA Championship favored to complete the career grand slam. Don’t bet against him.

Here's your final leaderboard: