The Valero Texas Open is not one of the high-wattage events on the PGA Tour schedule. Played this year the week before the Masters, the field was largely comprised of second-tier players trying to scoop up some prize money while the game’s elite took the week off to ready themselves for the season’s first major championship.

Jordan Spieth is far from a second-tier PGA Tour player. Spieth has three major championship victories (he needs a PGA Championship for the career Grand Slam) and, after winning the Valero on Sunday, he has 12 career victories. At 27 years of age, Spieth is on the very short list of elite American golfers who have achieved so much so quickly. Brooks Koepka has four major titles and will turn 31 next month.

Despite Spieth’s career record and his undeniable talent, his win at Valero was somewhat unexpected because it had been such a long time since he had won anywhere:

That last victory, incidentally, was at the 2017 Open Championship. Since that last win, Spieth has at times struggled to various degrees with almost every facet of his game, including his notoriously lethal putter. Spieth’s mental state, his health, and the possible impact of his 2018 marriage to his high school sweetheart on his game have all been fodder for speculation.

Last month, Spieth offered, if not an excuse for his spotty play, a possible explanation. Spieth sustained a bone chip in his left hand in 2018. He opted to play through the injury rather than have it surgically repaired, and he also opted not to make a grip change that would have improved his results short-term but might have cost him long-term. Per Bob Harig of ESPN.com, Spieth had this to say about the injury and its impact on his play in the past few seasons:

“It was 100 percent responsible for me not being able to strengthen my grip, which in turn then is probably normally the first thing guys go to, if something gets a little bit off is, all right, where in my setup are things different,” he said. “And if that’s one of the things, that’s going to impact how everything feels.”

Winning cures all, and Spieth will now be able to approach his tournament play for the foreseeable future without facing nagging questions from the media and the fans about whether he can ever get back to the top of the game. And what a time for that freedom of mind, given what the schedule brings this week:

Spieth won the 2015 Masters by four shots over Phil Mickelson and Justin Rose. Perhaps more famously, though, Spieth seemed to be rolling to a second straight green jacket in 2016 until he carded a disastrous quadruple-bogey 7 on the 12th hole after putting two balls into Rae’s Creek:

So it’s back to Augusta for Spieth, where he has already experienced the highest high and perhaps the lowest low in his remarkable career. Even with the 2016 collapse, Spieth’s record at Augusta is fantastic. Along with the win in 2015, he has tied for second twice (2014, 2016) and finished third alone (2018). Not surprisingly, Spieth’s odds to win the 2021 Masters are not nearly as long as you might expect them to be for a player who has won one event in four years. In most places, you will find Spieth at 11-1, which is down from 50-1 when 2021 began.

The Masters never really needs a fresh narrative to make it compelling. This year, it got one anyway.