Jordan Spieth ribs Arnold Palmer Invitational for lack of invite

Jordan Spieth spoke about not playing at next week’s Signature Event following his top-10 finish at the Cognizant Classic.

Next week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational will feature a high-profile field of 72 players but two of the game’s most popular players will not be there.

Jordan Spieth and Rickie Fowler did not receive invites to Bay Hill; instead, Rafael Campos, Justin Rose, Min Woo Lee, and Mackenzie Hughes received the four sponsors’ exemptions.

Last year, Spieth played through a wrist injury that eventually required surgery in August. He did not make it to the Tour Championship and posted only three top 10s.

Spieth subsequently missed more than five months and returned to the PGA Tour at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in early February. Spieth tied for 69th there, but then rebounded with a strong T-4 finish at the WM Phoenix Open. The three-time major winner missed the cut at the Genesis Invitational the following week, but bounced back at this week’s Cognizant Classic, finishing in a tie for ninth.

Now Spieth has a week off, and will have to watch one of his favorite events from home.

“I’m bummed not to be there next week,” Spieth said.

“It’s been a great, great place for me, and I really wish I was getting that start, but I needed to play better injured golf last year, I guess.”

Spieth said he feels good overall and will next tee it up at The Players, which begins Mar. 13. He will also play at the Valspar Championship in Tampa the following week.

“I feel like I’m trending in the right direction,” Spieth said.

“I feel like I played better [this week] than I did in Phoenix. Phoenix is a better fit for me, I think, maybe. I just throw out Torrey Pines because I did what I always do there. It’s really not a great judge on where I’m at.

“I really do feel like I’m playing good golf at about 60 percent of the control tee to green that I’m capable of doing and still able to come to a very challenging golf course and hit nice shots and shoot under-par rounds. I’m one swing away on Friday from having a chance to win, and that was a 9-iron, which is just a 1-in-100 kind of chunk.”

That one swing Spieth alluded to came on the par-3 17th, where he found the water off the tee. After re-hitting from the drop-zone, Spieth three-putted from 20 feet and walked away with a triple bogey six. He ultimately finished five strokes behind winner Joe Highsmith, but he would have been a bigger part of the conversation without that shot.

Had he finished higher, Spieth may have snuck into the Arnold Palmer Invitational field via the Aon Swing 5. But he also would have received an invite had he won, which would have marked his first victory since the 2022 RBC Heritage.

At any rate, Spieth’s week off may be a blessing in disguise — he can rest his left wrist before playing back-to-back weeks.

“[My wrist has] been pretty good this week. It’s been pretty much the same every morning when I wake up,” Spieth said.

“It’s just minorly maybe getting a little bit better as it’s getting warmer, but it’s very slowly — by the time I start hitting, everything is okay, and I’m not thinking about it much at all on the golf course, which is really the goal. I just hope that I start to wake up and it starts to feel a little more normal. It’s strange. It doesn’t feel unstable like last year; it’s just simply beating it up. It’s just the scar tissue and some of the inflammation.”

Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. Follow him on X @jack_milko.