Spieth rues 'fatigue', blames schedule

Jordan Spieth made 21 birdies at this year's Masters, including nine on Sunday while trying to keep pace with partner Phil Mickelson.

And it still wasn't enough to win — or even best the 52-year-old Mickelson.

Spieth finished the Masters tied for fourth place at 7 under, five shots behind winner Jon Rahm.

But Mickelson also tallied 21 birdies, making eight in the final round, including five in the last seven holes to finish at 8 under and surge past Spieth.

"I was trying to honestly just match Phil shot for shot coming in," Spieth said of the final round at Augusta National.

The 29-year-old Spieth said he made too many mental mistakes all week, saying "mental fatigue" led to 10 bogeys and two double bogeys.

"I played way too much golf coming into this," Spieth said. "I mean, this is eight out of 10 weeks (playing golf). So I need to change my schedule up going forward to be a little sharper during (Masters) week."

The 2015 Masters champion said he got "lazy" picking targets on some holes.

"I probably only had a target for 50 percent of the shots this week, and I like to have them 100 percent of the time," Spieth said.

Scheffler's cold putter

Scottie Scheffler's bid for a repeat at the Masters never materialized thanks in large part to his struggles on the green.

After entering the week as the world No 1 and the odds-on favorite to win, Scheffler could never get any momentum going with his putter and finished tied for 10th.

Scheffler had 128 putts for the tournament, which was 18 more than when he won the tournament last year by three strokes over Rory McIlroy. He was tied for the most putts of anyone in the field through the first three rounds.

"The first two days, I putted just awful," Scheffler said. "It was one of those weird situations where my good ones weren't going in and then my bad ones definitely weren't going in."

Agencies Via Xinhua