Written by Sean Martin
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – J.J. Spaun wants to win THE PLAYERS Championship. Rory McIlroy needs to.
THE PLAYERS Championship will now be decided by an aggregate three-hole playoff that will commence on Monday at 9 a.m. ET. It will pit the world’s second-ranked player, the owner of 27 PGA TOUR titles and perhaps the greatest player of his generation against the world No. 57, a former collegiate walk-on who owns one PGA TOUR win in his previous 227 stars and was pondering retirement less than a year ago.
There’s no question who the favorite will be in Monday’s playoff, and the pressure lies on the same person. Professional athletes are usually loath to accept moral victories but, Spaun already feels he has won something after executing a series of clutch shots over Sunday’s final holes, displaying a steely nerve that belies his resume. And now he enters Monday with the levity of an underdog.
“Everyone expects him to win,” Spaun, 34, said of McIlroy. “I don’t think a lot of people expect me to win. I expect myself to win. That’s all I care about.”
J.J. Spaun makes clutch up-and-down birdie on No. 16 at THE PLAYERS
In his post-round press conference, Spaun joked about spending Sunday afternoon’s delay with fellow San Diegan Charley Hoffman in the players-only gym, sitting in a chair called the Shiftwave, which calls itself the “world’s most advanced nervous system regulation device.”
Spaun put on a headset and eye mask, then sat in it for 10 minutes as Hoffman encouraged him to “breathe in positivity” while the chair’s magnets pulsed with what the company calls “pleasurable waves.”
“It’s a little intense,” Spaun said. “You feel like you’re in like a rocketship taking off.”
There is too small a sample to determine if the chair deserves credit, but Spaun birdied two of his final five holes to force the second aggregate three-hole playoff in PLAYERS’ history. It was a format designed to showcase TPC Sawgrass’ famed finishing stretch, and the first such playoff resulted in arguably the greatest finish in this tournament’s 51-year history. Rickie Fowler played the final four holes of regulation in 5-under par, then won a playoff with Kevin Kisner and Sergio Garcia that necessitated an extra, extra hole. Fowler eagled the 16th and birdied the 17th all three times he played it that day.
Rickie Fowler birdies No. 17 to win THE PLAYERS in sudden-death playoff
This playoff’s Monday start presents a unique situation, as two players will warm up for a truncated match on a golf course reserved solely for them. Spaun will arrive with all the momentum. McIlroy will bring the resume.
But he also will bear the weight of what could have been after building a lead that appeared insurmountable before teetering on the edge of another heartbreaking loss. McIlroy, a winner here six years earlier, was the focal report when play resumed at 5:15 p.m. local time.
Fans behind the 12th green chanted his name and then counted down the final five seconds of the delay. Seven people stood around McIlroy in the fairway as he prepared to play his wedge shot, three of them holding cameras and another two with microphones in hand. Moments before McIlroy started his pre-shot routine, one of the cameras circled McIlroy for a 360-degree view, the cameraman trailed by one man in a lime-green jacket and another in fluorescent pink pants.
The scene was hard to miss, the focus entirely on McIlroy. Another four cameras were pointed at him from just off the fairway. He wedged to 13 feet and made the putt. Spaun was struggling behind him in near anonymity. Just 62 yards from the hole after two shots on the par-5 11th, he chunked his third shot and three-putted for an unlikely bogey.
Rory McIlroy curls in birdie putt at THE PLAYERS
McIlroy was three shots ahead with six holes remaining. He already had won earlier this year at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and had the opportunity to win multiple PGA TOUR titles before April for the first time in his career. Though he had struggled with his swing this week, hitting less than half his fairways, he had been able to miss in the correct spots to minimize the damage.
But a mishit drive on 14 that never came close to the usual apex of his tee shots, missed well right of the fairway and necessitated a layup. He had to make a 5-footer just to save bogey, and he missed a birdie putt from a similar distance on the next hole, where he eschewed driver in favor of 3-wood to get the ball in the fairway. McIlroy failed to birdie the par-5 16th despite being greenside in two shots, then missed a 14-foot birdie putt from the fringe on the 17th. He played the 18th perfectly, finding the fairway with a driving iron off the tee and two-putted for par.
But his 4-foot putt barely snuck into the hole after his ball curled right, in the opposite direction that he had predicted. A miss would have added the 2025 PLAYERS to a list of recent heartbreaks for McIlroy, one that includes the 2022 Open Championship at St. Andrews, the last two U.S. Opens and the 2024 Irish Open at his beloved Royal County Down.
Rory McIlroy pars 72nd hole to cement lead at THE PLAYERS
“I’m happy to be in the position that I am, but also I feel like I had chances there on the back nine to close the door, and I didn’t quite do that,” McIlroy said.
While McIlroy was sputtering, Spaun was fighting.
“Once that bogey kind of hit me (on 11), I just tried to just fight back,” Spaun said. “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.”
While it seemed Sunday like THE PLAYERS was slipping away from him, it was his career that he was in danger of losing last year. He replied with a similar determination.
Last June, he was outside the top 180 in the FedExCup and thinking he might lose his card. As he faced an uncertain future, he had gratitude for nearly a decade on the PGA TOUR that included one victory, at the 2022 Valero Texas Open.
A changed perspective has unlocked his best golf. He finished third at the Wyndham Championship, the final event before the FedExCup Playoffs, and had another top 10 in the FedExCup Fall to clinch his card. Spaun arrived at THE PLAYERS with two top-three finishes already this season. And the good play continued this week. He started Sunday with the lead, and when he fell behind on the back nine, he was able to produce the necessary shots to chase down McIlroy.
Spaun knocked his 170-yard approach on 14 to a foot to start the comeback, then got up-and-down on 16 for birdie. He had a similar chip as McIlroy but knocked his to 9 inches. He faced a potential bogey on 17 but two-putted for par, leaving himself just 2 feet for his second putt. And when his drive on 18 trickled into the pine straw, he still hit the next shot onto the green. His 30-foot birdie putt stopped inches short of the hole, right in the heart.
J.J. Spaun makes clutch up-and-down birdie on No. 16 at THE PLAYERS
When a reporter asked if he would return to the Shiftwave chair Monday morning, Spaun joked that he might. And as he concluded Sunday evening’s interview in the dark, he whispered, “Sponsor me,” into the microphone.
Depending on what happens Monday, they might.
