Jordan Spieth withdrew during the opening round of the Travelers Championship, the final Signature Event of the season, citing a neck/upper back injury.

The 2017 Travelers champion ended his round on the 13th hole at TPC River Highlands, after he had been spotted using a muscle massager on his upper back during his round. Spieth was 5-over through 12 holes Thursday at the time of his WD.

Spieth's body started to lock up during a warm-up range session, but he wanted to push through due to the no-cut, Signature Event that awards extra FedExCup points. He commented on the injury after the round, saying, "Everything was great in my gym session, and I've been very, very excited to go out and play. Things have been getting better and better, and then my right scap just kind of locked — like tightened midway through the warmup, and I just kept hitting, and then all of a sudden it was moving up, everything around it started to — and then it was over the left and then it was like everything, so I stopped.

"It was both sides of my neck and upper back, and then I moved over to — I quit 30 minutes early from my warmup and came back to the table with my physio who was out there on the range ... I just wasn't moving very well ... then I hit my tee shot on 13, and it legitimately really hurt. I was walking off that tee, and I'm like, if it's even harder to turn, then I'm not going to be able to make a backswing that's even useful, and that's what happened on the bunker shot."

According to Spieth, the injury was unexpected and random. It’s his first withdrawal of his career, spanning 297 PGA TOUR starts. Spieth recently returned from a wrist surgery that required him to miss the second half of 2024. He first injured his wrist in May 2023 when the extensor carpi ulnaris tendon (ECU) popped out of the sheath. It reached a point where he decided to have surgery Aug. 21, 2024, in Colorado to rebuild the sheath. Spieth returned to action at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in February earlier this year after going nearly 12 weeks without hitting balls and then another month before playing his first round.

Spieth qualified for the Travelers Championship via his current 2025 FedExCup rank (extended Aon Next 10 beyond No. 10, in order to fill the field to 72 players). The Texan entered the week at No. 37 on the season-long standings, with the top 70 after the Wyndham Championship in early August qualifying for the FedExCup Playoffs and the top 50 eligible for Signature Events in 2026. Spieth has four top-10 finishes so far in 2025, with his best finish at THE CJ CUP Byron Nelson in his home state, where he shot a final-round 62 to finish fourth.

Spieth expressed his disappointment at the setback: "Yeah, it's incredibly frustrating because this was 10 out of 12 for me, and I was looking at this being the strongest one, and I was very confident about that. Everything I had done in practice and the pro-am showed me it's going to be a really good event. It's just a very weird circumstance. It's disappointing ... we're having a baby here in a couple weeks, so I'll have some time off now, obviously, to get healthy, but hopefully, after a few days, I go through the right process to just get right back to where I was. Yeah, it's a bummer."