Perhaps it’s fitting that this 51st Players Championship, the final edition before the PGA Tour scales back its membership, comes down to one of the Tour’s superstars and one of its rank-and-file veterans.
Because of a lengthy weather delay on Sunday afternoon, a three-hole aggregate playoff will be contested on Monday morning at TPC Sawgrass, just the fourth in the championship’s last 35 years.
In one corner will be Rory McIlroy, the world-beater whose 42 worldwide victories include 27 on the PGA Tour and who has been at the forefront of the push for a leaner, meaner tour.
In the other, J.J. Spaun, the 5-foot-7 former San Diego State walk-on who battled both diabetes and self-doubt before becoming a PGA Tour winner a few years ago and who, at age 34, is now enjoying a career season, even if not everyone’s noticed.
While McIlroy is vying for his second Players trophy, first in six years, Spaun is perhaps playing for more than himself. Just the top 100 players in FedExCup points at the end of this year will retain their full cards, and the Korn Ferry Tour is seeing a third of its graduation opportunities cut as well. This evolution will ensure having a card means something, though clearly there will be fewer of them. Guys like McIlroy are overwhelmingly for the changes, as they’ve been with the recent implementation of signature events, limited-field tournaments that have given those lucky enough to qualify for them a huge advantage in staying in them. But guys in Spaun’s position have challenged what they deem an elitist shift, though their concerns have mostly been for naught.
And so, somewhat ironically, on the PGA Tour’s biggest stage, the rank-and-file guys showed out.
Spaun held the 54-hole lead, eyeing his second win following his 2022 Valero Texas Open breakthrough. Spaun has never made it to East Lake, but thanks to a pair of top-3s already this year, he entered this week ranked No. 57 in the world (even a playoff loss on Monday would push Spaun far enough inside the top 50 to clinch another Masters berth). Right behind Spaun was Bud Cauley, once a hotshot youngster but now 35 years old and playing on a major medical extension, a serious car accident seven years ago derailing a once promising career. Alex Smalley kept his card by only a few spots last fall while Danny Walker, a graduate off the Korn Ferry Tour who just a few years ago was peddling coconut shrimp at Bahama Breeze, didn’t get into this week’s field until Jason Day withdrew on Thursday morning.
All had strong hopes of victory to start a stormy Sunday, and that was before Tom Hoge, a veteran grinder who is perfectly content with traveling economy, flew up the leaderboard with a closing 66 to take an early clubhouse lead at 10 under.
But what was shaping up to be the everyman’s championship quickly shifted tune. McIlroy yanked away the reins with a scorching start at TPC Sawgrass and then proceeded to shake off the dreamers, one by one, as he barreled toward a second gold-man trophy – well, all but one pesky challenger.
Leave it to Spaun to hang on, birdieing two of his final five holes – and nearly three in that stretch as his 30-foot birdie bid to win at the par-4 18th hole stopped a few rotations short of the cup.
If anything summed up the juxtaposition between the final two Players competitors left standing, it was this: Upon finishing, Spaun thought he’d be heading straight to the par-3 17th hole for the playoff. PGA Tour rules official Gary Young had to inform him it was a three-hole playoff, on Nos. 16-18 – and they’d be starting overtime on Monday at 9 a.m. anyway.
“I mean, everyone expects [McIlroy] to win,” Spaun said Sunday evening. “I don’t think a lot of people expect me to win. I expect myself to win. That’s all I care about.”
McIlroy hoping to reset and win Players in playoff
Rory McIlroy describes how he feels after finishing in a tie at the top of The Players Championship leaderboard and whether he was paying attention to the final stretch of J.J. Spaun’s fourth round.
McIlroy had an awkward start to his week, his run-up to the PGA Tour’s flagship event overshadowed by a situation with University of Texas player Luke Potter, who heckled McIlroy after the four-time major winner rinsed his tee shot at the par-4 18th hole. Potter’s quip caused McIlroy to walk over to Potter and one of Potter’s teammates and take the teammate’s cellphone, presumably to erase any potentially viral footage. Potter apologized, but McIlroy declined the comment on the matter despite several inquiries.
McIlroy’s driving woes continued Thursday as he found just four fairways. He had switched back to some old equipment, including the driver, before last Sunday’s final round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational. That came after he’d previously swapped in new TaylorMade wedges, fairway woods and the Qi35 driver following a successful West Coast swing that included a win at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
But frustrated by losing strokes off the tee on that Saturday at Bay Hill, McIlroy had his manager, Sean O’Flaherty, retrieve his reliable Qi10 driver and matching fairway woods, which were back at McIlroy’s home in South Florida. O’Flaherty ordered an Uber for the clubs, and $995 later ($665 plus a $330 tip, per Golfweek) McIlroy was reunited with his old sticks.
He closed in 72 to tie for 15th at Arnie’s Place, then vowed to use the setup through at least the Masters.
And despite the inaccuracy days later, McIlroy opened in 5-under 67 at TPC Sawgrass to instantly put himself in contention.
“I certainly didn’t drive it the way I wanted to,” McIlroy said after that first round, in which he guided around a little cut, cognizant of needing to not miss left. “… I’m not going to be able to get away with it for the rest of the week. Sort of rode my luck out there a little bit.”
McIlroy bounced back by hitting 11 fairways on Friday, then backed up with only five on Saturday. Yet, at 8 under, he was in striking distance of the 12-under Spaun. With Akshay Bhatia, Patrick Cantlay and Sepp Straka the only real star power in the mix (Ludvig Åberg missed the cut, Xander Schauffele finished last among those who made the weekend, and Scottie Scheffler turned in a frustrating T-20 in more ways than one), McIlroy was feeling little threat, assuming, of course, he could clean up some short-game stuff.
“I feel like I’ll have a really good chance,” McIlroy said on Saturday night.
The next morning, McIlroy erased the gap in what seemed like an instant. He wedged to 8 feet at the first and made that, then followed the birdie with an eagle at the par-5 second, where he flushed his second shot to 10 feet from 231 yards out. After a bogey at the par-4 seventh, where McIlroy sent a greenside bunker shot through the green, he drained a 15-footer for birdie at the par-3 eighth. Spaun would bogey the eighth behind McIlroy to hand the outright lead to the world No. 2.
Spaun birdied his ninth hole, benefitting from a rules break that allowed him to take two drops from sprinkler heads and go from a gnarly lie in the rough to the fairway. But McIlroy made another birdie, this time from 13 feet at the par-5 11th, to retake a one-shot lead just before the horn sounded for inclement weather. Play was halted for four hours beginning at 1:15 p.m. ET as a cold front moved through the area.
Spaun able to grind out final round of The Players
J.J. Spaun was able to “grind it out” in the final round of The Players Championship and feels the weather delay helped change his mindset with his first-career playoff coming against Rory McIlroy to decide the winner.
When the final round resumed, at 5:15 p.m. ET, McIlroy wasted no time by sinking another 13-foot birdie putt. Spaun soon bogeyed No. 11, and McIlroy’s lead was suddenly three strokes.
Around that time, Hoge had just polished off his round when he was asked if he still liked his chances.
“Probably not, to be honest with you,” Hoge said, honestly. “Rory is out there with six holes left, and it feels like the wind maybe died down just a little bit here, a little bit softer conditions. Certainly, don’t expect a whole lot out of it.”
What did Hoge know?
McIlroy headed to the infamous par-3 17th not with a commanding lead but ahead by just one again. He bogeyed the par-4 14th after blowing his drive well right of the moguls and needing to lay up. Spaun birdied the hole to get back to 11 under and still had the par-5 16th to play. Bhatia was 10 under, though only with the 18th to go.
“Once that bogey kind of hit me, I just tried to just fight back,” Spaun said. “I kind of went with the odds. I had nothing to lose. Now I’m trying to catch Rory, and I can’t really control what he does, but I can control what I do, and I just started committing to my shots and my swing and trusting it more. Now, when I’m hunting, it’s easier to let it go. Whereas, starting the round I was a little tentative, a little scared and stuff.”
Spaun caught a mudball in the 16th fairway, which influenced a left ball with his second shot, but he nearly chipped in for eagle before tying McIlroy with a tap-in birdie. McIlroy was across the lake, having launched a wedge into the island green and watched the slope carry it to, again, 13 feet. This one, though, was up against the collar, which grabbed McIlroy’s putter head as he stroked the putt, contributing to the ball staying out of the hole, the par keeping McIlroy at 12 under.
As Bhatia whiffed an 8-foot birdie putt at the last (he’d end up tied for third with Hoge and Lucas Glover, perhaps the harshest critic of the PGA Tour changes) and Spaun left himself 45 feet from the front portion of the 17th green, McIlroy stepped onto the 18th tee box, where five days earlier he was reloading and swiping a Longhorn’s phone, and grabbed his strong 3-iron. The fairway finder did its job with a beautiful draw, traveling 287 yards and leaving 182 to the hole.
Top 10 with the putter on Sunday, McIlroy then two-putted from 73 feet, capping off the par with a 4-foot make, to post 12 under.
“I feel like I had a chance to go home with the trophy tonight,” McIlroy said. “But I’ll get a good night’s sleep and reset and try to win it tomorrow.”
With the pressure on Spaun, he was unflappable in carding a pair of hard-fought, closing pars.
Don’t tell Spaun he’s not a superstar, though he is realistic with himself. The previous evening, he was asked to sum up his career to date, to which Spaun responded with an answer that was replayed multiple times on Sunday’s broadcast.
“I didn’t have the pedigree of a junior golfer growing up,” said Spaun, who for years as a kid wanted to be a professional skateboarder. “I wasn’t raised or groomed to be a professional golfer. I walked on to a California state school. I guess I kind of blossomed as I took on this journey, whether it was like junior golf, then high school golf, then college. I didn’t know what my ceiling was. … I still guess I don’t know what it is.”
Golf Channel analyst Paul McGinley later said of the two playoff challengers: “If Rory wins this tomorrow, it’s not going to change his life. If J.J. wins this, it is going to change his life.”
Spaun’s foot slipped on the wet turf as he swung at his ball in the pine straw left of the 18th fairway on Sunday evening. But his second shot still traveled nearly 200 yards and onto the putting surface. He had a chance.
And he’ll go to bed Sunday night still with a chance, which in this day and age on the PGA Tour, is all someone like Spaun can ask for.
