Last March, Rory McIlroy became the eighth multiple winner of THE PLAYERS Championship, but if you had seen his play in round one of the tournament, you would never have expected him to even contend, much less win.
His tee shots were pretty much everyplace except where they needed to be. He was in the rough, in the pine straw and the sand. It was so bad that his driving accuracy for that round was just 28% of fairways hit. Really, that’s fairly awful for a player of his skill level. He was 139th in the field in fairways hit out of 144 players.
If there’s such a thing as slight of hand on the golf course, he definitely had it on Thursday. He scrambled faster than a short order cook during the breakfast shift and somehow eked out a 67 for the first round. Amazingly, it turned out to be his lowest round for the tournament. Maybe he should forget about hitting fairways!
McIlroy’s greens in regulation in round one were 72%, but they had to be that good to shoot the score he did. As they say, there are no pictures on the scorecard.
(For those who don’t speak golf stats, greens in regulation means hitting the green in one for a par three, in two for a par four and in three for a par five. Now you know as much as most people.)
After McIlroy finished, he was asked some fairly snippy questions about his play.
Like, had he ever practiced out of pine straw? Or were there other times when he might have made birdie after being completely out of position on a hole? Someone asked if he knew what the scoring average was from the trees right of the 18th hole.
Credit McIlroy. He took it in good humor.
His best answers were, “I certainly didn’t drive it the way I wanted to,” and “Didn’t hit it in as many fairways as I would have liked.” And the ever popular, “I’m really happy that I shot 67 today.” I guess!
If that wasn’t enough, he was heckled by a college kid. At the 17th tee, McIlroy finally reached out and grabbed the kid’s phone. We presume it was returned later.
At the end of round one, Lucas Glover, J.J. Spaun and Camilo Villegas were tied at 6-under par.
“The thing about this place is there’s always some really good scores and always some really bad scores,” Glover said. “The margins are razor thin here, akin to say Augusta or Bay Hill. You get off just a little, you can make big numbers in a hurry.”
“You’ve got to be cautious here,” Villegas warned. “It’s a tricky golf course.”
“Not making a lot of mistakes and playing relatively stress-free golf kind of pushed me over the edge to playing really well,” Spaun commented.
Glover is a former U.S. Open champ and a six-time PGA TOUR winner. At the time, Spaun had one PGA TOUR victory in 227 starts. That was at the 2022 Valero Texas Open. Villegas, from Colombia, already has five PGA TOUR victories.
Round Two — Friday
For McIlroy, Friday was better in some ways and worse in others.
He hit an incredible number of fairways, 78.57%. But his greens-in-regulation stat was down, a dismal 55%.
If you learn nothing else from this, it should be that even the top, top, top players do not always play perfect golf. They have mediocre and bad days like everybody else, but they have learned to post a decent score when it happens.
McIlroy’s highlights included a strange birdie run at the 10th, 12th, 14th, 16th and 18th. That’s fairly incredible.
It wasn’t all smiles and roses, however. He butchered two holes on the front nine, the 6th and the 9th.
Despite his round-one stats and low greens in regulation numbers in round two, McIlroy had posted his lowest first two rounds at the PLAYERS, ever. But it wasn’t good enough for the lead. However, he was in 4th place. He could see the lead from where he was.
Leaders were Min Woo Lee and Akshay Bhatia, both posting 67-66. Spaun had slipped to third. McIlroy was just one shot back, tied with Collin Morikawa and Alex Smalley.
In the how-did-he-do-that-? category, Justin Thomas shot a 62 that included 11 birdies. So, the course looked easy to him, at least for a day.
“That was one of the best rounds I’ve played, for sure. I just got it — mentally it was the biggest thing. I felt like I did an unbelievable job of just staying, keeping my eyes forward, keeping my blinders on, not looking backwards, forwards, anything like that,” he explained. “It was just, how can I put this ball in the fairway off the tee, and then how can I make birdie, and let’s rinse and repeat.”
Round Three
Saturday was partly cloudy and warm, warm for somebody not living in North Florida. It was in the mid-70s. Warm for us is 80s. Hot is 90s. When it’s 50s or lower, we wait until that passes before going out.
Wind gusts were expected to be in the low 30s. That would turn the 17th and all its vicious friends into true green monsters.
To no one’s surprise, the leaderboard changed again by day’s end. It was the wind that did it, and the fact that even golf at TPC Sawgrass on a windless day is really hard.
When Spaun saw the conditions before play, he said a score near even par would be good.
“I was just trying to hit it close to pins but only when we knew we had the right club and the right wind to do so, and if not, then we were just going to hit it to 30 feet and try to make one,” he said. Hmmm. Interesting.
Spaun began his round with birdies at the second and third holes. That moved him up from 10-under to 12-under. Unfortunately, he quickly gave a stroke back at the fourth to slide back to 11-under par.
Meanwhile, McIlroy got a birdie at the second hole which brought him to 10-under par, but he played the 5th poorly. He got to the green in two shots and was just 18 feet from the hole. That’s when the comedy of errors began. His first putt nestled up about four feet from the hole, but his second one, he must have had a brain cramp or made a horrible misread because he turned a four-footer to a seven-foot comeback putt.
Regardless, he would go on to finish the round at 8-under, in 5th place.
Unexpected things happened to other golfers, too. Bud Cauley, who, a few years ago was involved in a car accident that gave him six broken ribs, a collapsed lung and a broken leg, had a round that included seven birdies and an eagle. He sprang into second place. Glover and Alex Smalley regained momentum and clawed up the leaderboard.
But all alone in the lead at the conclusion of the third round was Spaun at 12-under. He was followed by Cauley at 11-under, then Glover and Smalley, tied at 9-under par.
McIlroy was four strokes off the lead at 8-under, in 5th place.
The course played so tough that, of the final seven pairings, only Spaun and Glover posted scores under par.
Fourth round. Sunday … and Monday
The course was so hard that the final round took two days to play. In Africa, play could be halted by anything from a dust storm to a herd of elephants, a charging rhino or hungry lions. In Florida, in the early spring, it’s usually thunderstorms. Or alligators, who as a big group are called a congregation. That’s hysterical. Someone had a sense of humor there. That’s as good as a flamboyance of flamingos.
(https://digitalcitizen.ca/2016/10/01/list-of-animal-group-names-collective-nouns)
Regardless, thunderstorms were involved. And we all know the multiple word for that is “cluster” (Write your own jokes) or “complex.” When the complex arrived, play was stopped at approximately 1 p.m.
McIlroy was leading by one shot. He had just birdied the 11th hole to get to 12-under par and was 3-under par so far for the round.
Spaun, playing behind McIlroy, had completed 10 holes. As far as locations to have to leave the course for a rain delay, those are pretty good places to be because they are close to the clubhouse. Better than 5th or 17th tees.
Then it was a matter of waiting out the storm. And waiting. And waiting.
At about 5:15 p.m., balls were in the air again. Play continued with golfers trading blows, some self-inflicted.
At the 16th, where someone with McIlroy’s length should make birdie, he drove into the right rough. His second shot went to the left side of the green and ended up in that little swale where the giant tree that blew over had been. Then he chipped to about 12 feet, but he didn’t make the putt or it might have been almost over. A true shoulda, coulda moment.
Moments later Spaun did what McIlroy couldn’t do. He birdied the 16th.
Spaun was then tied with McIlroy as he headed toward two of the most annoying finishing holes in golf, the 17th island and the 18th with all that water left. Professional golfers fear left. That’s why Pete Dye puts so much trouble there. Even McIlroy said about his round that he was erring to the right because right at TPC Sawgrass is always better than left. Food for thought for anybody who plays here.
McIlroy’s second shot at the 18th was nearly 70 feet from the hole. Even Tiger Woods’ Better Than Most putt at the 17th hole was shorter. (Approximately 60 feet.)
So, while McIlroy didn’t make his first putt at the 18th, he did polish off the four-footer that remained. He was in at 12-under par. He went to scoring to wait.
Meanwhile, Spaun parred the 17th like it was something he did every day, and he went to the 18th tee. Unfortunately, he put his drive into the pine straw on the right. He would have to manufacture a shot, perhaps the most important one of his life to that time. His feet were in the rough, but the ball was on pine straw.
As he hit the shot, his right foot slipped a little, maybe caused by dampness of the grass after the rain. However, he got to ball to the green. It landed 30 feet from the hole.
His first putt, one that could have won the tournament outright, rolled right on line, closer and closer and closer, and it stopped about four inches from the hole. But for those two shots, he would have been the PLAYERS champ. As it was, they were tied.
Because of the storm delay, darkness was imminent. They would have to come back on Monday to play three holes for the title.
Monday: Three holes to Goldman Trophy glory!
The playoff at THE PLAYERS is three holes, 16, 17 and 18, all of which have to be completed. Low score wins. There is no quitting part way though, although it’s certain some people have probably wanted to.
At 16, McIlroy did what he should have done in regulation: put his ball in the center of the fairway. He hit his second onto the green.
Spaun did what Rory had done on Sunday: put his drive in the right rough. He took a big chance with his second shot, landing it perilously close to the right edge of the fairway where it took a ginormous bounce and landed in a greenside bunker.
His third ended up 20 feet from the hole. McIlroy’s first putt left him just five feet or so for birdie. They walked off the green with McIlroy 1-under and Spaun even par.
The 17th loomed. It’s always ominous, always in the way of a good finish.
McIlroy had the honor, and his tee shot landed about 30 feet from the hole. Spaun hit second, and to his horror, the shot was long, wet and landed with a “thoopssh” sound. The gallery did a collective gasp.
“Straight into the water,” said Terry Gannon, TV announcer for NBC.
It was the first ball Spaun put in the water at TPC Sawgrass all week.
As though overcompensating for the first shot, Spaun’s second from the dreaded drop zone was a bit short, but dry. It rolled down and nestled up against the collar of the green. It was in a horrible spot made worse because an arm of rough above the pot bunker was blocking his path to the hole.
McIlroy missed his 30-footer. He had about 10 feet left, and missed that. The bogey put his cumulative score at even par.
Brad Faxon on NBC said, “These greens are definitely faster this morning than when they left the course last night.”
Now Spaun had to putt, knowing that he couldn’t really get to the hole from where he was. His first putt went to between 10 and 12 feet beyond the hole. His second one ran past about two feet. And he made that for a 6. Spaun was now 3-over.
“Nightmare at 17,” Gannon said as Spaun finished up at the 17th.
Now, they walked to the final playoff hole. Both players hit their shots right of the fairway on the 18th.
Jim “Bones” Mackay of NBC said Spaun had 222 yards to the hole and a space in front of him to hit a low shot under the tree limbs. He topped his shot, but it rolled out to the fairway.
Smiley Kaufman said that McIlroy had a choice of going low under the branches or high over the trees. McIlroy chipped a low shot out to the fairway. Both players were the about same distance to the green.
Spaun’s shot from the fairway landed on the left side of the green and rolled onto the fringe about 68 feet from the hole.
McIlroy landed his shot about 17 feet.
“McIlroy — moving much closer to officially closing it out,” said NBC’s Dan Hicks as his shot landed.
Spaun putted, and Kevin Kisner said, “It should still give him a ton of confidence for the rest of the season.”
Is Kisner selling crystal balls? Two months later, Spaun would win the U.S. Open at a ridiculously tough course, Oakmont.
McIlroy’s first putt came to rest two feet beyond the hole. He putted out, took off his cap and reached out his hand to shake Spaun’s. Spaun did not finish. He knew it was over before the 18th hole was completed.
When his putt dropped, McIlroy become the eighth multiple winner of THE PLAYERS, joining Jack Nicklaus with three and Steve Elkington (2), Hal Sutton (2), Fred Couples (2), Davis Love III (2), Tiger Woods (2), Scottie Scheffler (2). And of course, less than a month later, McIlroy won the Masters, completing his career grand slam in a spellbinding final round.
