It's unfathomable that it has been a full year since Jordan Spieth went traipsing over that hill at Royal Birkdale to find his ball and the Claret Jug. It feels like it was last week. The 146th Open Championship was an iconic one, and Spieth was its epicenter. His victory at Birkdale did not recalibrate his general trajectory, but it may have accelerated the speed with which we thought he would get to his destination.

Three majors at the age of 24 is heady stuff, and Spieth took his first swing at the career grand slam last August at the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow. He'll get shot No. 2 this August at Bellerive and then shot No. 3 next May at Bethpage. It did not seem after last year's Open like an inevitability that Spieth would complete the slam, but it did seem almost incomprehensible that he would go another year without winning at all.

That's where we're at 23 tournaments later with Spieth, though. He came close a few times last fall, and he nearly closed this year's Masters with one of the great rounds in major championship history and another green jacket. But it has become undeniable that Spieth has lacked the panache this year that defined him in the earliest part of his career. He doesn't have a win or a runner up going into The Open for the first time ever as a pro.

Make no mistake, this is not an obituary. Spieth's career is very much alive and well and on track to become one of the 10 greatest careers in the history of this sport. But when somebody who's on that trajectory creeps up on 365 days without a victory, you notice. He notices. Everyone notices.

His primary -- and maybe only -- issue so far in 2018 has been with the putter. Spieth is No. 14 in strokes gained from tee to green and No. 175 in strokes gained putting. While the tee to green number is slightly below his norm, the putting number isn't even close. So far in 2018, Spieth has four top 10s in 17 events, a number that would be only half of his 2016 figure. You know, the "down year" following his 2015 heroics.

I don't really find any of this to be cause for concern and neither does Spieth.

"I have no doubt in my ability to come back and defend whether form is on, off or anything indifferent," Spieth told the Associated Press about The Open, which starts this week in Scotland. "I've proven to myself that I can go from two missed cuts to potentially winning. That's not anything that throws me off."

However, I do think that because he has won at the level at which he has won and because of the path he's been on, a year-long drought affects him more than most. It's not a big deal in the big scheme of things -- Tiger Woods once went 18 months from July 1997 to February 1999 with just one win as well as another 15-month stretch from October 2003 to January 2005 with just one victory -- these things happen. But because it's now a storyline, the way Spieth receives and responds to it will be telling.

And what the hell, are we even having this conversation if, say, Spieth beats Dustin Johnson in their playoff at the 2017 Northern Trust? We probably aren't, right? So saying he's gone a year without winning makes for a good (and true) headline, but it probably belies the success he had at the end of last season following his Open win. That's counterbalanced, however, by his struggles (again, relative struggles) so far in 2018.

There has been a disruption to the rhythm. My friends think I'm crazy for thinking Spieth is going to win 40 times on the PGA Tour. Two a year, I tell them, for 20 years. A metronome.

Nobody seems like they have a better infrastructure for this to play out than Spieth. Even when he "struggled" in 2016 following his five-win, two-major 2015, he still won twice. He scratched out specific victories without his best stuff generally for the year because that's what he does. Now ... well, now he hasn't done that in a while, and it seems like the metronome has been bumped, maybe even stopped. It certainly hasn't been broken, but it might need a tweak or two.

There is an innocence lost that comes with time. I don't know if Spieth has experienced that, but I do know it's hard not to. When you're 21 and naive to how all of this actually works, it's easy to lose yourself within the canopy of your own year-long heater. It's easy to lose consciousness for months at a time. The older you get, the more sober-minded you get about this game and the reality of the 150 best players on the planet teeing it up at the majors, the tougher it gets to tap into that wunderkind self that seemed to exist outside the harsh realities everyone else was bound by. The more you start thinking about, well, everything.

Rory McIlroy -- per usual -- had a great quote on this recently. He said it as a response to being asked about the 2007 Open (at Carnoustie) compared to the 2018 Open. He played the former as an amateur, and now he'll tee it up as a four-time major championship winner.

"I'm a lot older, hopefully wiser and vastly more experienced than my younger self, but I don't honestly think the 18-year-old Rory would have wanted the knowledge I possess today," McIlroy told Golfweek.

The irony of gaining wisdom and knowledge is that there are times, especially in this sport, when you might be better off without it. Sometimes you're better off just ... playing golf.

Spieth is an old soul. That combination of old soul-ness and an innocence of youth made for a wicked good combination over the first 140 events of his career. He won a lot. Gained a lot. He was somehow both wise and naive. Spieth often acts like a 50-year-old with a 60-year-old's swing in a 20-year-old's body with a 10-year-old's imagination. It's part of what makes him so great.

And no event in the world is gentler to imaginative old souls than this one, The Open. The Claret Jug is a magic maker, like maybe no other even in sports. It crowns legends and has done so almost exclusively in the last few years. So no, Spieth hasn't won in a full 12 months, and yeah, there have been red flags on the course over the last six months. But maybe -- maybe -- what Spieth needs, only an ancient place like Royal Troon or St. Andrews ... or Carnoustie can provide.