New Open champion Jordan Spieth admitted that his astonishing Claret Jug conquest at Royal Birkdale was the biggest high of his career.

The 23-year-old Texan hauled himself back from the brink of disaster on the 13th hole to produce a thrilling late thrust which swept him to a three shot win over Matt Kuchar with an 11-under aggregate of 268.

Spieth won two Majors, the Masters and the US Open, during a shimmering 2015, but this was the ultimate silver lining.

After suffering a Masters meltdown at Augusta last year, when he squandered a five shot lead on the back nine, Spieth exorcised those ghosts last night.

He said: “I'm going to thoroughly enjoy this. I look back on '15 and think, ‘yeah, I enjoyed it’, but I never realized the significance until you kind of hit a low, hit a pitfall, to appreciate the high so much.

"And this is as much of a high as I've ever experienced in my golfing life. And I'm going to enjoy it more than I've enjoyed anything that I've accomplished in the past. This round took as much out of me as any day that I've ever played golf.”

If the late, swashbuckling Seve Ballesteros was the Car Park Champion up the coast at Lytham in 1979, then Spieth will go down as the Practice Range Champion in 2017.

His mind-mangling escapade on the 13th hole was ghoulishly enthralling. His salvage operation and subsequent brilliance, however, was spell-binding as he conjured the kind of imperious, inspiring golf that can only be produced by the very best.

While the charging Li Haotong came hurtling up the order with a sparkling 63 to set a six-under clubhouse lead, Spieth had looked tense and agitated for much of his final round as he tried to preserve the three shot advantage he had brilliantly forged through 54-holes.

There were missed putts here, little wobbles there and tee-shots that were going everywhere as stumbled to the turn in three-over while Kuchar drew level.

Nobody, though, could have predicted the turn of events that occurred on the 13th hole as he carved his drive into the dunes.

From that point a confused, anguish-laden and prolonged palaver unfolded as Spieth opted to take an unplayable and go back some 50 yards or so onto the driving range to play his third shot.

Spieth eventually clattered his approach just shy of the bunker and managed to get up and down for a career bogey to drop just a shot behind his rival. “I said to my caddie, ‘that’s a momentum shift’,” Spieth added. “That putt mattered. From there I became the challenger instead of the leader. Before that, the wheels had come off completely. I was asking myself ‘how do we get back on track?’ It took a bogey to do that.”

What happened next will remain etched on the mind as if chiselled on by the Claret Jug engraver.

He came within a whisker of making an ace on the very next hole after his tee-shot skipped narrowly past the hole. A routine birdie putt, on a day that was far from routine, galvanised Spieth and from there poor Kuchar was hit by a quite devastating salvo. A raking eagle putt from some 40-feet on the next thrust him back into the lead. “Go get that out,” Spieth hollered to his caddie as he marched to the next tee with purposeful gusto. Another long putt for birdie on the 16th was a magical encore. Not so long ago, Spieth had been reeling on the ropes but his counter-punches had flattened Kuchar. Another birdie on 17 gilded the lily. Spieth had hauled himself back from the brink in a quite wondrous way.

Runner-up Kuchar, who led with five to play, was left devastated as his bid for a maiden Major title was crushed by a rampaging Spieth.

"It's crushing, it hurts," said Kuchar, who posted his best finish in a major to beat the joint-third in the 2012 Masters.

"You work so hard to get to this position and to have a chance to make history and win a championship. You don't get that many opportunities.

"To be this close, to taste it with five holes to go, it's a hard one to sit back and take.

"There is an excitement and a thrill to have played well, put up a battle, put up a fight, but it's impressive stuff when a guy does something like that.