Jordan Spieth looks to build on incredible 2015 achievements

World No 1 Jordan Spieth is treating the new year as a continuation of the old one as he looks to repeat his phenomenal achievements of last season.

Spieth won the Masters and US Open and finished fourth in The Open at St Andrews, missing out on a play-off by a single shot as he looked to win the third leg of an unprecedented calendar grand slam.

After helping the US retain the Presidents Cup in Korea, Spieth had three weeks off before finishing seventh in the WGC-HSBC Champions in Shanghai, which was part of the 2015 European Tour but on the 2016 PGA Tour schedule.

“I’m not even thinking of it as a new year,” Spieth said yesterday. “I’m just thinking of we had a three-week break and we’re just continuing to hopefully stay at the same level.

“I played a few weeks ago. We just had a long enough time for me to sit down with Cameron (McCormick, his coach) after some time off and say, ’All right, here’s what we’re going to start to do’ and we did that strictly by going over statistics.

“We figured out that specifically my wedge play needs to get better, proximity to the hole and up-and-down percentage, from 60 to 140 yards or so. I felt like my wedge play was average last season, and it was as average as any category that we had.”

Spieth was reluctant to outline specific goals for the season, instead preferring to take a long-term view when asked how he planned to produce an encore to last year.

“Doesn’t an encore mean that the show is then over?” he said with a smile. “I hope I’ve got like 40 years out here... To be honest, I’m not thinking of this (year) as anything different. When you write the date, that’s about it in my mind. I think we’ve just had a little bit of a break.

Spieth, who has been paired with defending champion Patrick Reed in Kapalua, could lose his world number one ranking to Day if the Australian — who became a father for the second time during the off-season — can claim a fifth win in his last eight events.

Meanwhile, Englishman Andy Sullivan defends his South Africa Open title, at Glendower this week.

Major champions Ernie Els and Trevor Immelman lead the home challenge at Glendower, with tournament host Els revealing Rory McIlroy is due to play next year in return for Els contesting last year’s Irish Open, which is hosted by McIlroy.