• Rory McIlroy won his second Players Championship title on St. Patrick’s Day, defeating J.J. Spaun in a three-hole aggregate playoff.
• McIlroy’s victory marks his 28th PGA Tour title and places him in an elite group of golfers with multiple major and Players Championship wins.
• McIlroy’s win at TPC Sawgrass serves as a confidence boost as he prepares for the Masters in April.

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — As Rory McIlroy warmed up for a three-hole aggregate playoff against J.J. Spaun to decide the 2025 Players Championship, a tournament volunteer walked over and said, “Feels like an Irish day, doesn’t it?”

With the wind whipping and the temperature in the 50s, McIlroy acknowledged the similarities, smiled and kept loosening up. But it wasn’t lost on the 35-year-old son of Holywood, Northern Ireland, that it was St. Patrick’s Day. He said he even looked for a green shirt to wear but hadn’t packed one for the occasion. It’s a day when Irish eyes have smiled on him before and they would again as McIlroy won the three-hole aggregate playoff by three strokes.

As PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan noted, it was the second time McIlroy had won the Players on St. Patrick’s Day, having done so previously in 2019. “I think he had every intention of pushing this thing into Monday so he could do it again,” Monahan said.

As McIlroy later pointed out he had also won the Arnold Palmer Invitational on the national holiday, “so it’s been a good luck charm for me.”

The three-hole aggregate playoff was over quickly as McIlroy avoided mistakes. He ripped a 336-yard driver at the par-5 16th, the first playoff hole, planted his second shot to 33 feet and two-putted for birdie to take a one-shot lead heading to the 130-yard island green. During his warmup session, McIlroy had turned around and hit three-quarter nine irons to the third green, measuring the distance with his Trackman to simulate the conditions he’d face at 17 and it paid off as he stuck his tee shot safely on the green and 30 feet from the hole.

“I have this little three-quarter three-quarter shot, I call it. It’s three quarter backswing with three quarter speed,” he said. “I practiced a ton of those shots on the range all week, just knowing that we were going to play in windy conditions.”

With the amphitheater ringed with fans many of whom must have called in sick or played hooky — McIlroy joked, “Obviously no one works in Jacksonville” — Spaun, hitting second, had gone to the other side of the range essentially to do the same thing as McIlroy, but his 8-iron came out pure and flew the green into the water.

“I hit a great shot. I did what I needed to do. I couldn’t believe it was long,” Spaun said. “It just wasn’t my luck of the gust, I guess.”

Spaun made a triple-bogey six and McIlroy a bogey to take a three-stroke lead to the final hole and a bogey was enough to secure his 28th Tour title and become the eighth player to win the Players multiple times. He also joined an exclusive group consisting of Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Scottie Scheffler to win multiple majors and multiple Players titles. 

On Sunday, McIlroy roared out of the gate with a birdie-eagle start to make his move. Tee times had been moved up to avoid a forecast of thunderstorms but Mother Nature wouldn’t be denied.  After a four-hour suspension of play, McIlroy birdied the 12th hole to take a three-stroke lead with six holes to play. But Spaun, 34, refused to quit, making tap-in birdies at Nos. 14 and 16 and his 30-foot birdie putt at the 72nd hole stopped just short of the hole.

Tied at 12-under 276, McIlroy, who shot 4-under 68, lamented not closing the door. He said he watched some of the movie “The Devil’s Wear Prada while eating room service, re-set and came back committed to get the job done. But not without his share of nerves. McIlroy said he woke up at 3 a.m. and couldn’t get back to sleep.

“I was as nervous as I can remember,” he said.

On paper it was a mismatch between McIlroy, the four-time major champion and world No. 2, and Spaun, who had just one victory in 227 career starts. He still had scar tissue from blowing the 54-hole lead at the 2022 FedEx St. Jude Championship.

“I didn’t want to have that feeling of, not defeat, but just like crawl-into-a-hole-and-die kind of a feeling because it was just so embarrassing,” Spaun said. “I was just afraid to feel embarrassed again.”

But he leaned into the underdog mentality, that all the pressure was on McIlroy, who was expected to win, and said he believed he could win.  

Except during the playoff, he played as if a spell that had turned Spaun into Cinderella at the ball for the past four days at TPC Sawgrass had expired at midnight on Sunday. He missed the fairway and hit his bunker shot heavy at 16, settling for par, made triple bogey at 17 and played 18 like a 10 handicap to gift-wrap the victory to a popular champion.

McIlroy said that he could relate to Spaun’s fear of failure. 

“We’ve all had periods where we’ve felt like that. I’ve had to go through it,” he said. “Even walking from the 16th green to the 17th tee today, I could see myself hitting it in the water, right?” he said. “That’s something that crosses your mind, and it’s like, OK, how do I replace that thought with a better one and visualize and get myself into the moment. I’ve practiced hard at that, and definitely getting better at it.

“People say pressure is a privilege, and it really is. You want to feel like that on the course. That’s why I spend the time that I do practicing and trying to master my craft, that you get yourself in those positions to see what you’re made of.”

 McIlroy said he’s been inspired by Scheffler, the world No. 1 whose seven victories last season included a repeat at the Players. 

“I knuckled down,” McIlroy said.

NBC’s Dan Hicks noted during the trophy ceremony that McIlroy was just the second player to win the tournament despite missing more than half the fairways at TPC Sawgrass.

“Dan, let’s focus on the positives,” McIlroy cracked.

But it highlighted that McIlroy can putt and chip well enough and is capable of escaping from trouble, such as the pine straw this week, when his driver misbehaves.

“I feel like I’m a better player now than I ever have been, and it’s nice to see the fruits of my labor paying off,” he said.

With a win last month at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, McIlroy has won twice on U.S. soil in a calendar year for the first time before the Masters. How does he plan to prepare for his latest pursuit of trying to win the Masters and complete the career Grand Slam in April, the only one of the 12 months on the calendar where he’s never tasted victory.

“Double down on what I’m doing,” he said. “Continue to do the same thing.”

It worked for the Northern Irishman on St. Patrick’s Day, a day he said he doesn’t traditionally celebrate but he may consider toasting his latest victory with some sort of green concoction.

“It’s a pretty big deal in Ireland,” he said. “I feel like you guys take it to another level here.”

At the Players Championship, McIlroy was the one who showed he can take it to another level even without his best stuff.