The Players Heads To Monday Playoff
McIlroy and Spaun will vie for the title after four-hour Sunday rain delay. Plus, notes on how key holes played after recent changes, and Niemann wins again to build Masters momentum.
Rory McIlroy and J.J. Spaun will decide the 2025 Players in a Monday-morning playoff. The three-hole aggregate affair will feature TPC Sawgrass’ legendary finishing holes with a difference of $1,775,000 on the line. Big purse at The Players!
The two veterans who’ve had markedly different careers finished tied at -12 after a four-hour rain delay. The late restart allowed for the regulation round to be completed, but it was too dark to think about starting the three-hole playoff.
The 18th hole seemed primed to decide the tournament, but both players ultimately walked away with different types of pars. McIlroy had birdied the 18th the first three days but was happy to two-putt from 73 feet. Spaun drove through the fairway but excavated himself from the pine needles to 33-feet, where he would leave his birdie putt just inches short.
Should McIlroy secure his 28th PGA Tour win, he will move to T20 on the PGA all-time wins list two of the greatest putters of all time, Leo Diegel and Paul Runyan. He would also become the eighth multiple winner of The Players and the oldest (35) to win since Tiger Woods in 2013. And most of all, he inches closer to the Masters knowing he can win without his A-game. McIlroy “only” gained 2.62 strokes with his driving and but nearly a stroke to the field around the greens despite gaining almost five strokes with his putter. Then again, TPC Sawgrass and Augusta National have almost nothing in common around the greens.
A Spaun win would earn his second Tour title in his 228th career start (2022 Valero Texas Open). By reaching a playoff, he has already reversed a brutal career record at TPC Sawgrass where Spaun had made only one cut in five appearances before this week. Even with a T2 at the Cognizant Beaches (aka the Honda) and a T3 at the Sony in January, Spaun joins the Players Out-of-Nowhere HOF with his performance.
He’s also got a terrific story of perseverance to tell.
After nearly cracking the world top 100 at the end of 2018, Spaun plummeted to No. 584 by mid-2021 after thinking he was a Type 2 diabetic. But as Brentley Romine documented, Spaun saw a specialist who promptly diagnosed Spaun with Type 1, late onset diabetes.
“I went through two years of struggling,” Spaun said. “I’m not blaming that, but that was another contributing factor. I was doing the wrong things. The regimen for Type 2 is a little different than for a Type 1; I’m not even getting the right medicine to regulate my blood sugar. I was eating nothing, probably less than 1,500 calories a day, and still having high-glucose side effects as a ‘Type 2,’ so that’s why I needed the insulin to help level that out and be able to eat more calories in general.”
No matter how Monday’s playoff pans out, Spaun’s play will place him well inside the world top 50. He started the week ranked 57th. With only two weeks to go before the top 50 cutoff deadline, a Masters invitation is a virtual lock, according to OWGR watcher Nosferatu.
Now, for today’s Tough Love segment.
With all due respect to the players who put on a nice show, the volunteers who kept the hooligans quiet, or whoever sells TPC Sawgrass its ryegrass, no pro event has been more diminished by LIV departures. This one felt more like the Comcast Business Solutions Greater Ponte Vedra Classic At The Beaches.
Juxtaposed against the LIV leaderboard—played at an (admittedly lifeless) video game synthetic s-show in Singapore—it’s hard to ignore the paltry number of recognizable Players contenders. If this inspires thoughts of writing on behalf of either Danny Walker or Alex Smalley Marching and Chowder Societies, just title your email “I Know You Don’t Give Two &^%$’s What I Think, But...”, and send it to CreatorCouncil@pgatourhq.com.
Also…
Coverage of the 9 a.m. ET playoff will be carried on Golf Channel and Peacock. Touching how Peacock can somehow stream the channel on occasion.
This is the ninth Monday finish in Players history: 1974, 1976, 1981, 1983, 2000, 2001, 2005, 2022, 2025.
On his 35th birthday, Bud Cauley (T6) earned an exemption for the remainder of the 2025 PGA Tour season by reaching the top 125 threshold via the Major Medical category.
Two-time defending champion Scottie Scheffler posted a 73 for a -4 total and T20 finish. Scheffler finished 46th and 44th strokes gained around and on the greens for the week while struggling to play at a reasonable pace. On Friday, his group was put on the clock as Scheffler camped out on the greens. His on-course behavior over the weekend bordered on neurotic and embarrassing. He’ll probably win his next three starts.
Will Zalatoris arrived at the 14th tee Saturday 11-under-par and within one of the tournament lead before going 8-6-5-5-5 to shoot 78. Zalatoris finished T30 after a final round 71.
Shot of the week ended up being played Wednesday by Collin Morikawa caddie J.J. Jakovac. He made an ace without warming up at the 17th during the annual caddie competition—sponsored by, no kidding, Knockaround Sunglasses.
Sunday highlights:
How The Distance-Hampering Devices Played
Ah, how rich. The PGA Tour spending money to combat distance gains through costly course modifications—as they are laying off devoted longtime staffers to save money while signaling opposition to a rollback—did not go unnoticed.
Hey, sometimes cults are tough to explain.
Anyway, the par-4 sixth hole played without an obnoxious overhanging tree for a decade, but the Tour returned an overhanging oak to stay true to Pete Dye’s vision. The tree relocation included a twenty-yard extension to reach 413 yards. Architects Davis Love and Scot Sherman oversaw the work along with the PGA Tour’s team that included Stephen Cox and Steve Wenzloff. Some A.I. was thrown in just to justify some overspending somewhere.
As documented in a 10-minute video, the goal was to restore the same sensibilities from Dye’s day when a similarly pesky tree made an otherwise straightaway lay-up shot a tad more uncomfortable. Pete liked when pros squirmed. Fine. We get it. And the devotion to Dye is touching, if a tad thin at this point. Too bad it doesn’t extend to those waste bunkers that are now the same blinding white as the hospitality tents.
I digress.
As for how the sixth played, players and caddies were largely ambivalent, other than Matt Fitzpatrick, as noted in this piece by Sean Zak.
After four rounds, the changes encouraged players to hit more drivers, mini-drivers, and three-woods instead of the long irons used in recent years. At least that’s how I’m looking at the numbers.
In 2024 the hole played to a 3.954 average with 73.3% of players hitting the fairway with an average tee shot distance of 257.5.
In 2025 the sixth played to a 4.106 average with 59.05% hitting the fairway with an average tee shot distance of 274.3. Therefore, the change in club selection off the tee negated any impact by the tee extension.
If the Tour’s data-mining team is looking to justify the changes, the drop in fairways hit meant the green-in-regulation number dropped from 67.05% in 2024 to 55.05% in 2025. Senior VP Bonuses for everyone!
Over at the spectacular par 4 14th which played as the toughest hole at TPC Sawgrass in 2024, an effort was made to penalize bail-outs right. More likely, the Tour (wisely) wanted to remedy the visual of bailouts bouncing off a cart path on national television.
In 2024, the 14th saw a driving distance average of 296.4, with 64.73% hitting the fairway and 56.38% finishing on the green in regulation.
In 2025, the scoring average remained the same but distance number dropped to 293 yards but saw accuracy go up to 66.13%. The GIR number dropped to 47.56% but the hole produced eight “others” compared to just one last year. More bonuses for $1 million-a-year SVP’s unless some of the eight “others” sit on the Policy Board or PAC.
Conclusion?
The changes did not harm the course and were fine. The 6th played a bit tougher and the 14th almost the same.
Now, about all that silly harvesting of lush rye rough, the blinding white sand Pete hated, or the inability to restore more sandy pine scrub out of fear the players would overpower The Players?
Maybe after the rollback you’ll eventually support?
LIV Singapore: Niemann Wins Again
Joaquin Niemann continued his fine play while dominating the moribund LIV stop in Singapore. A bogey-free final round 65 gave the Chilean a five-stroke win over Brooks Koepka for his second LIV win in three starts and sixth worldwide over the last 15 months.