The 2025 PLAYERS Championship required extra holes, played Monday morning. Rory McIlroy claimed his 28th PGA Tour victory, defeating JJ Spaun in a three-hole playoff at TPC Sawgrass.
During the second of the three holes, the famed ‘island green,’ saw Spaun’s tee ball head straight for the drink. He would card a triple bogey on the hole, all but ending his chances at his second career win on Tour.
However, after the loss, Spaun was in nothing but good spirits.
“I kind of have a different perspective on things as far as, like, golf has been my life ever since maybe college and stuff, and turning pro and climbing the ranks and trying to make a living at this,” Spaun said.
“I have like a four-year-old now and 20-month-old, two girls. Golf isn’t everything anymore, and it’s easy to kind of just let golf be golf. It’s not the end of the world if I play bad. It’s not the end of the world if I play great, it’s just golf.”
That ability to keep things in perspective has spawned a resurgence of his golfing career.
He already has three top-10s in 2025, including a T3 at the Sony Open and a T2 at the Cognizant Classic. His worst finish in eight starts (excluding a withdrawal from the WM Phoenix Open) was finishing tied for 33rd at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
His consistently solid play this year has vaulted the 34-year-old to No. 5 on the FedEx Cup points list.
But his outlook does mean the loss to McIlroy did not hurt.
“Yeah, a little disappointed. It was just a tough morning to play golf in general. It would probably be one of the harder days that we’d have if it was this wind direction.”
Indeed, the winds were whipping on Monday morning, with gusts upwards of 35 miles per hour. That wreaked havoc on players throughout the weekend but might have been the biggest culprit leading to Spaun’s triple.
“Yeah, I was never thinking anything other than 8-iron,” he said of his club selection on 17.
“We were warming up on the TrackMan this morning in a similar direction and getting kind of dialed in with what kind of shot I’d have to hit to fight the wind and carry the number that we were needing. It was just kind of like a nice chip 8-iron.
“Pulled an 8-iron, and even after Rory hit 9, he’s easily a club longer than me. I don’t know if I flighted it too well, but it just went through the wind. I couldn’t even tell where it was going to be. I didn’t know what to tell it, like sit, go. If anything I was leaning more towards go.”
That unpredictability certainly played a part in how The PLAYERS played out.
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