Every golf fan knows Jordan Spieth can be colorfully entertaining in sharing his thoughts, and in that department the three-time major winner doesn’t have to shake off the rust from his lengthy time off since wrist surgery in August. In a phone interview on Friday with the Associated Press, the Texan had this beautifully creative description of the state of his swing when he first started hitting balls again after three months off: “wet concrete.”

In other words, Spieth was looking to smooth out some swing issues that contributed to frequent wrist issues over the past several years. The most recent injury happened in May 2023, with a tendon in his wrist popping out of its sheath and he eventually submitted to surgery on Aug. 21 to rebuild the sheath.

“I had some really bad habits for a long time,” Spieth, 31, told the AP. “Whether it was something that would have happened anyway or whether anything in my wrist was causing me to not be able to get into certain positions, I don’t have that issue now.

“I’m not calling this swing changes,” he said. “These are just a reset into some of the stuff I did that was my DNA, that was super advantageous that I had gotten away from for one reason or another.”

Spieth, who didn’t hit balls for 12 weeks and took another month to play his first round, revealed that he plans to return to competition at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am that begins on Jan. 30.

Spieth’s last win came in the 2022 RBC Heritage, and while he notched seven top-10 finishes in 2023, that number dipped to only three last season. More strikingly, he was rarely competitive, with no finishes better than a T-25 since last April while dropping to 70th in the world ranking. His last major win is the 2017 Open Championship.

“I think the biggest goals for me, I want to feel like I step on the tee and I know I’m one of the best golfers in the world—I have no doubts about that when I step on the tee,” he said. “I want things to be in place where I feel consistent enough to believe that day in and day out. It has to do with being on runs where you’re finishing in the top 10, top 15 every week. I know that feeling. That’s the feeling I want to get back to.”

This article was originally published on golfdigest.com