Steve DiMeglio

USA TODAY Sports

Jordan Spieth is just fine.

No, really, he is. Seriously, he’s A-OK.

Just ask him.

“I’m not taking it very hard,” Spieth told reporters Tuesday near Pittsburgh when asked about his collapse on the back nine in the Masters that derailed his chance to win back-to-back green jackets at Augusta National. “I have ladies at grocery stores coming up and putting their hand on me and going, ‘I’m really praying for you. How are you doing?’ And I’m like, ‘My dog didn’t die, I’m doing OK.’ I’ll survive; it happens. It was unfortunate timing.

“Actually I laugh about it now. I really do. But it keeps coming up, and I understand that.”

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In April, no one could understand how Spieth let a five-shot lead at the turn in Sunday’s final round slip through his hands. But after making back-to-back bogeys to start his inward 9, he hit back-to-back shots into Rae’s Creek on the par-3 12th and made a quadruple-bogey 7 to fall behind eventual winner Danny Willett.

Try as he might — Spieth made birdies at 13 and 15 — he couldn’t make up for the disaster on the 12th hole.

“I wasn’t trying to hit the ball at the flag on 12,” said Spieth, who will next play in next week’s Players Championship. “I was trying to hit it to our spot on the left. I already made the mistake in 2014 hitting it in the water there. My miss that week was slightly off the heel with a short right shot, and had that miss come on 11, it’s no problem. Had it come on 14, 16, these other holes, it’s no problem. It was just bad timing on the miss; then a just poorly executed wedge on the next. ...

“And you know, it is what it is, and I’ll move on. If you’re in contention at a major, hopefully 50-plus times in your career, something like that is bound to happen. Just don’t let it happen again.”

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Spieth, who hasn’t played competitively since exiting Magnolia Lane, spoke publicly for the first time of the Masters disappointment.

He was at FedEx Ground corporate headquarters in Coraopolis, Penn., to celebrate his 2015 FedExCup championship through a $1 million donation in his name on behalf of FedEx to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The donation is part of the FedEx Cares global charitable program, which will commit $200 million to more than 200 communities by 2020.

On Wednesday morning, he’ll visit iconic Oakmont Country Club north of Pittsburgh for the first time. At Oakmont in June he’ll defend his U.S. Open title he won last year at Chambers Bay in Washington.

Oakmont is on Spieth’s bucket list.

“I’m going to try and learn what I can tomorrow and I’m going to come in early and see it before the tournament week starts, try and take the same approach as Chambers Bay,” Spieth said. “ … I’ve actually played a couple rounds (at Oakmont) on my Full Swing Golf Simulator at home. I’ve seen the golf course. At least I know which hole is shaped which way, so I’ll get on the tee and at least know. But hitting off a good lie on Astroturf might be a little different from the lies I’ll experience out there.

“So yeah, going in with a blank canvas. I’m not going to look too much into tomorrow as a practice round and spend a ton of time hitting different putts to different locations. Tomorrow will be a fun round just getting a first look, and then getting a yardage book, mapping out maybe a couple things here or there that I want to know when I arrive for the real preparation.”

By the sounds of things and the look of things — especially the social media postings of his spring break trip to the Bahamas with Rickie Fowler, Smylie Kaufman and Justin Thomas following the Masters — Spieth has moved on.

But he won’t forget. Or be allowed to.

“It will keep coming back up, even if I were to go on to next week and win and to go on to Oakmont and produce clutch shots and win. It’s still going to come up when I get back to Augusta. I understand that,” Spieth said. “… I think the biggest impact for me came from personal messages that I received from some of the world's greatest athletes, and I'm not going to give names out because I don't want to, this is confidential.

“But literally from the world’s greatest athletes, I received notes immediately following that night, pretty much saying, this happens everywhere. No doubt you’ll be back.”