Jordan Spieth met with the media yesterday at Pebble Beach, and claimed that his “game is trending in the right direction,” despite being in a horrific slump. The former world No. 1 also said that he’s in a “good place” because he’s already enjoyed a “pretty fantastic career,” even if he never gets back to being the elite player he once was.

“How do I improve to get myself into contention this week and then what do I do next week and just staying very present and recognizing the longevity of a career and that your career’s not defined by a couple bad years,” said Spieth, who is currently ranked No. 21 in the world, his worst position since he was a teenager.

“And I could have really poor years the rest of my career and still have a pretty fantastic career. So if I just think about it that way, it kind of certainly makes me a little happier, frees me up a bit.

“So I’m in a good place right now. I feel like my game’s trending the right direction and sometimes that means results are coming soon, sometimes it means they’re coming later, but they’re coming. I’m not going to chase them as hard as I tried to maybe force or chase them last year because you can get hurt doing that. You can get into some bad patterns.

When asked what evidence he can point to that would show his game was trending in a good way, Spieth couldn’t pinpoint anything specific, just offering more generalized feel-good babble.

“I think my putter has been really good over the last five, six months. I’ve seen a lot of improvement there, back to where I needed to be and it’s close to being really close to being at where it’s been in the past,” said Spieth.

“And then with the ball striking, just trying to kind of work through a little bit of some timing stuff and starting to really see some solid shots. I didn’t strike the ball well at all the last two events I played and in San Diego was able to score even with that, in spite of that, I should say.

“But over the last week and a half really put in a lot of work and I’m excited about what the last couple days here has shown. And so I just got to go out and trust what we have been working on and whether the shot plays for it or not at this point I got to trust it and get it back to kind of zeroed out where I want it and then go from there.”

Spieth will play with Dustin Johnson for the opening three rounds at Pebble Beach, as he seeks to – at minimum – post his first top-10 finish since the 2018 British Open in late July.