Spieth hopes losing top spot can help Masters bid

Spieth's 4 and 2 defeat to Louis Oosthuizen at the WGC-Dell World Match Play on Saturday opened the door for Jason Day to assume the top ranking and the Australian capitalised thanks to a 3 and 2 success over Brooks Koepka at Doral.

Jordan Spieth shows frustration at WGC-Dell Match Play

Jordan Spieth hopes that entering the Masters without the added pressure of being world number one could benefit him at Augusta.

Spieth's 4 and 2 defeat to Louis Oosthuizen at the WGC-Dell World Match Play on Saturday opened the door for Jason Day to assume the top ranking and the Australian capitalised thanks to a 3 and 2 success over Brooks Koepka at Doral.

Since last August, Spieth, Day and Rory McIlroy have all topped the official golf world ranking and the Texan hopes that the spotlight falling on Day can help his own bid for successive green jackets.

"To be honest, it could be a good thing for me going into the Masters," Spieth, 22, told reporters.

Spieth was unusually error-prone in defeat to Oosthuizen on a course that he was familiar with from his time at the University of Texas and will hope he can get back into form at next week's Houston Open.

"I didn't make it very hard on Louis, which is unfortunate," Spieth said. "I was off from when I hit my first 10 shots on the range.

"The ball was slicing off, which is very odd. I've had incredible control of the ball this week and of my wedges. I'm not exactly sure what happened, I still don't really know.

"And it could have been something as simple as ball position or alignment. I tried to figure it out for the entire range session, but I just couldn't grab a shot that I knew I could go to the course with. And on the first hole I sliced it off the tee there and kind of went from there. It was just a very off day.

"The good stuff is there when I have control. As long as I can hold it together four, five, six rounds in a row then we're in good shape. I feel like it was a big improvement this week off of the last month.

"If I think about it that way we are going to be in good shape in a couple weeks and I think we'll get in contention next week, and hopefully hold a little more consistency there come the weekend.

"From Tuesday to now I feel much more confident than I did about Augusta. I played very, very solid the last few days and most importantly I made a lot of birdies, and that's something I haven't been doing as of late."