A tale of two waves took place Thursday in the opening round of the 2025 Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass. Pete Dye’s devilish design gave early goers everything they could handle before conditions eased in the afternoon and gave way to a trio of surprising first-round leaders in Camilo Villegas, J.J. Spaun and Lucas Glover.
In his 12th appearance at The Players Championship, Villegas is off to the best start of his career posting an opening 6-under 66 as he seeks to make the cut for the first time since 2016. He held the solo lead at points Thursday but ultimately finished even with Spaun (from the afternoon wave) and Glover (from the morning wave) as birdies flew before competition wrapped up.
The morning groups played to an average of 73.31 before the afternoon tee times maneuvered through TPC Sawgrass at an average of nearly 1-under par.
While the trio at the top go to sleep with the lead, it is Rory McIlroy who is front and center in everyone’s mind after 18 holes. The 2019 champion navigated the par 72 without his best stuff Thursday but still went 4 under without a bogey on his back nine en route to shoot a 67. He sits just one off the lead at T4 alongside local lad Billy Horschel and Min Woo Lee, who contended in this championship two years ago.
“I certainly didn’t drive it the way I wanted to. Didn’t hit it in as many fairways as I would have liked,” McIlroy said. “Yeah, I think with the greens being so receptive, you can get away with it a little bit. 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. But I’m trying to hit this cut shot into play. Missing right off the tee here on any hole is way better than missing left. Just sort of hitting this cut sort of up into the wind, and obviously you don’t need to hit it too far here, so yeah, just going to go hit some balls here and figure it out and try to hit a few more fairways [Friday].”
McIlroy will try to ride his luck again in the morning as he experiences a quick turnaround sharing a tee time with world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler. The two-time defending champion could have squeezed more out of his opening round, but Scheffler remains in the conversation after an opening 69 that featured just one birdie across the four par 5s. The three-peat bid remains alive, but a big Friday may need to be in store before weekend weather rolls into town.
Let’s take a look at how the leaderboard shaped up on Thursday in the first round of the 2025 Players Championship.
2025 Players Championship leaderboard, Round 1
T1. Camilo Villegas, J.J. Spaun, Lucas Glover (-6): Just as we all predicted. Glover rattled off four straight birdies to end his round to reach 6 under while Villegas limped to the finish line with a late bogey. Meanwhile, it was Spaun who may have impressed the most as he led the field from tee to green and went around TPC Sawgrass without dropping a shot.
“Hitting a lot of fairways, making a lot of putts,” Glover said. “No secret, honestly. You probably can say that most places on Tour. But for me, my cut-made-to-top-10 ratio is really high, so I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.”
T4. Rory McIlroy, Min Woo Lee, Billy Horschel, Akshay Bhatia (-5): McIlroy hit only 4 of 14 fairways, and it didn’t seem to matter. The four-time major champion was fighting the right miss all afternoon but was still able to put seven birdies on the scorecard including an incredible one from the pine straw on No. 18. It felt like he was stuck in neutral for most of his front nine but kicked it into overdrive around the turn with four straight birdies on Nos. 9-12. Horschel and Villegas combine to give Florida Gators fans two rooting interests atop the leaderboard.
T8. Rickie Fowler, Denny McCarthy and eight others (-4): Fowler got his round rolling in the right direction thanks to his approach into the par-5 9th with his mini driver. Setting up a tap-in birdie, the 2015 champion was off and running from there. Fowler added three more birdies coming home and slowly but surely climbed up the leaderboard. After finding something with his full swing in his last start at the Cognizant Classic, Fowler is feeling it again.
T18. Scottie Scheffler, Patrick Cantlay, Robert MacIntyre and nine others (-3): It was a pretty standard 69 from Scheffler. He ranked inside the top 10 in strokes gained tee to green and outside the top 80 in strokes gained putting. Scheffler missed four really good chances from inside 10 feet. After not putting great at Bay Hill, he is answering questions about the flat stick once again.
“So, the hole is about this big,” Scheffler said with a smile. “Sometimes, when you’re putting from 10 feet, it could go in here and then other times it ends up right there. So, you tell me.”
T30. Jordan Spieth, Sepp Straka, Collin Morikawa and 12 others (-2): Spieth’s day featured just about everything — two eagles, two birdies, two pars, two bogeys and a double bogey — and that was just his front nine. He only hit five fairways and eight greens in regulation and will need to sure up his ball striking if he is to remain a factor on this leaderboard.
“You like to see that there’s firepower,” Spieth said. “If I made 16 pars and two birdies, I would be like, ‘Oh, what do I need to do to make more birdies?’ But if it was from hitting every green to 15 feet and you hit good putts, then you know it’s coming. So sometimes it’s easier to get rid of bogeys when you know you’re going to make enough birdies. But it kind of depends on how it’s done. Ideally, I’m hitting more greens in regulation because it is very challenging around the greens here.”
T45. Ludvig Åberg, Tommy Fleetwood and 17 others (-1): Take away two head-scratching mistakes, and Åberg is among the leaders of this tournament. The Swede was brilliant across 16 holes — playing them in 5 under — only to nearly give up all his work on the remaining two. Åberg needed four putts on the par-3 13th and chipped his third into the water on the par-4 18th. Both blunders led to double bogey, but he remains well within reach in his second tournament appearance.
T98. Hideki Matsuyama, Nick Taylor and 12 others (+2): Matsuyama got off to a dreadful start hitting two golf balls in the water and playing his first six holes in 5 over. A birdie on his seventh hole, the par-5 16th, seemed to kick him in the right direction as he hung tough without his best stuff and played 3-under golf the rest of the way.
T134. Justin Thomas, Matt Fitzpatrick and three others (+6): Thomas held a share of the lead roughly two hours into the championship. Getting to 2 under through seven holes, Thomas proceeded to dump shots into the water on Nos. 17-18 and turned in 3 over. He donated a couple more golf balls on his second nine. A couple late birdies allowed Thomas to avoid a score in the 80s.
T139. Max Homa and four others (+7): Despite remaining confident in his swing changes, Homa remains lost. He signed for four scores of six or higher including a pair of double bogeys. Homa played the par 5s 3 over with a birdie.
144. Viktor Hovland (+8): The struggles continue for the former FedEx Cup champion, who carded three double bogeys or worse en route to the only round in the 80s.
