Rory McIlroy to face JJ Spaun in play-off at Players Championship

They’ll return to the Stadium course at 1pm Irish time to play the volatile loop of 16, 17 and 18 for an aggregate score playoff. If they’re still tied after three holes, they’ll go back to the island par-3 17th hole and play it repeatedly until someone wins.

“I’ll get a good night’s sleep and reset and try to win it tomorrow,” McIlroy said. “I think it’s important to hit the 16th fairway (in the morning) and get off to a good start there and then just go from there. You’ve got to make five good swings. That’s all it is. So try to get up there, make five good swings tomorrow morning and get this thing done.” 

It was a long Sunday that started for the remaining combatants before 10 am local time and ended about 9½ hours later before sunset due to a four-hour weather suspension after the turn.

McIlroy turned a four-shot deficit to Spaun at the start into a three-shot lead within minutes after the resumption of play when McIlroy birdied the 12th and Spaun three-putted for bogey on the 11th. From there it just slipped from McIlroy’s clutches.

“The whole day was a bit of a battle,” said McIlroy, who watched Man U win to kill time during the delay. “Standing here feeling like I probably should be going home with the trophy tonight.” 

It was Spaun, in fact, who very nearly stole the trophy down the stretch in regulation after his bogey right out of the four-hour layoff triggered him. He stuffed it stone dead for birdie on the difficult 14th. His pitch from a similar spot to where McIlroy was left of the par-5 16th green nearly fell for eagle and his 30-foot birdie putt on the last pulled up 4 inches short in the heart of the cup.

“Once that bogey kind of hit me, I just tried to just fight back,” said Spaun, a one-time PGA Tour winner who has had climbed to No. 57 in the world with a pair of high finishes this season. “I kind of went with the odds. I had nothing to lose. Now I’m trying to catch Rory, and I can’t really control what he does. But I can control what I do, and I just started committing to my shots and my swing and trusting it more. Because it’s easy to – now when I’m hunting, it’s easier to let it go. Whereas, starting the round I was a little tentative, a little scared and stuff.” 

McIlroy – a 27-time PGA Tour winner including four majors with 10 more victories on the DP World Tour – was anything but tentative at the start. He certainly seemed likely to add his name again to the Players trophy he won in 2019. With the strongest pedigree on a pretty unheralded leaderboard, he quickly made himself the one to watch by charging out of the gate with a birdie and eagle from short distance on the first two holes.

He got unlucky when his drive on the seventh settled in a divot and he pulled his subsequent wedge into a brutal spot to try to save par from a bunker and made bogey to fall out of the three-way lead with Bhatia and Spaun. But a bounce-back birdie on the par-3 eighth and another on 11 pushed McIlroy to 12-under, one ahead of Spaun when the horn blew to suspend play as a series of thunderstorm cells rolled through.

“I’m happy to be in the position that I am, but also I feel like I had chances there on the back nine to close the door, and I didn’t quite do that,” McIlroy said. “But I’m excited for the opportunity tomorrow.” 

On paper, the playoff looks like a mismatch, but as McIlroy has proved through the years that nothing is as easy as it seems in golf. Especially on the big stages.

“I’d like to think that I can fall back on my experience and maybe have a little bit more than J.J.,” he said. “But then at the same time, tomorrow is all just about execution and getting up there and, as I said, making five good swings.” As Spaun proved on Sunday, the 34-year-old won’t yield.

“I showed myself that I don’t have to shy away from the moment,” Spaun said. “I think in the past I’ve done that, just kind of been afraid of being in that spotlight, being in that pressure, being worried about failure. But it’s hard to win, and you have to fail multiple times in order to win. That’s kind of what I’ve learned throughout my career, and it paid off today.” 

McIlroy has suffered his share of heartbreaks on big stages, so he has his own demons to overcome when they reach the 16th tee in the morning. Spaun believes the pressure is on the favorite.

“I mean, everyone expects him to win. I don’t think a lot of people expect me to win,” Spaun said. “I expect myself to win. That’s all I care about.”