PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Four days wasn’t long enough for The Players Championship.
J.J. Spaun sank a tying par putt on the final hole to force a Monday playoff with Rory McIlroy at the Stadium Course. Spaun had a 31-foot birdie putt for the win but left it 3 inches short to send the tournament into a Monday finish for just the ninth time. The three-hole playoff will begin at 9 a.m., with a three-hole aggregate score deciding the winner.
It felt like it was McIlroy’s tournament to lose. He started the round four shots behind Spaun and wound up taking the outright lead by No. 11. Then, a loud crackle of thunder rattled the grounds, the rain and lightning began and a four-hour weather delay started.
Played picked back up at 5:15 and it looked like McIlroy was going to coast to his second Players title. But McIlroy did the bulk of his damage before the weather interruption and labored to even-golf the final seven holes.
His three-shot lead was gone after Spaun knocked in a birdie putt on 16, hitting a perfect wedge from 94 yards out to inside 9 inches and catching McIlroy at 12 under.
With a chance on 18, McIlroy’s approach caught the shelf on the green and rolled back to leave a 70-foot putt. He hit it to within 4 feet and then sank his par putt. Spaun’s drive on 18 found the pine straw down the right side, but his approach and putt were beautiful top force the Monday round.
Tom Hoge had a blistering final round with a 6-under 66 to finish at 10 under. Spaun led by four to start the day, then found himself trailing McIlroy by three shots after a bogey on 11. He was even par on the round but played his best in the clutch. Spaun’s par on 17 came after a tough, up to downhill putt. And his putter nearly won it for him on 18.
Akshay Bhatia, a 23-year-old from California, was in the mix, too, but stalled out with a bogey and a string of pars on the back nine. He missed a 4-foot putt for birdie on the scoring-friendly 16th and stayed two shots back of the lead the rest of the way.
McIlroy’s first Players win came in 2019 in a one-stroke win over Jim Furyk. Since then, McIlroy has won a dozen more tournaments, including a couple of Tour championship titles and served as the de facto spokesman for the PGA Tour during its years-long battle against LIV Golf.
There were opportunities for McIlroy to both fade and pull away. His tee shot on No. 14 went way right and into the tree line. McIlroy ironed out over the trees and into the fairway, then put his approach on the green, but missed his putt for par. McIlroy dropped another stroke with a two-putt on 15, a hole Spaun birdied. McIlroy missed a birdie opportunity at 16.
Three days of pristine conditions gave way to a barrage of nasty weather in the final round that chased golfers into the clubhouse at 1:15 p.m. with McIlroy surging and atop the leaderboard with a one-stroke lead on Spaun.
The tournament did everything it could to squeeze in the final round, moving up tee times and starting golfers on the Nos. 1 and 10 tees. But the leaders only made it through 10 holes before the weather horn blew after a massive thunderclap that vibrated the Stadium Course. Twenty-one golfers had completed their rounds by that point but the four-hour delay that followed made it a race to try and avoid a Monday finale.
The last time The Players finished on Monday was in 2022 when Cam Smith turned in a blistering final round with the putter and held off Anirban Lahiri. That tournament was hammered by poor weather throughout the week as storms dropped nearly 5 inches of rain on Ponte Vedra Beach to push The Players into an extra day. Before, that it was 2005 when Fred Funk prevailed just before the sunlight ran out. In 2000, Hal Sutton held off Tiger Woods on Monday. And in 2001, it was Woods beating Vijay Singh in a Monday finish.
Jacksonville resident Danny Walker was one of the best stories of the tournament.
Ranked 284th in the Official World Golf Ranking, Walker was an alternate until Thursday morning when Jason Day withdrew with an illness. Walker had pedestrian first round (1-over 73) in his Players debut and did a little better on Friday (2-under 70) but made the cut on the number. Walker surged into the mix on Saturday with a 6-under 66 in windy and rugged conditions to get on the leaderboard in T-8 and five strokes back of Spaun. He finished at 9 under and T-6.
Scottie Scheffler’s quest for history ended without much fanfare. He started the day 5 under and couldn’t gain any ground on the challenging Sunday pins and unfavorable weather. Scheffler was trying to become the first golfer since Steve Stricker (2009-11) to win the same tournament three consecutive years. Stricker did that in the John Deere Classic.
