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The Players Championship's runner-up J.J. Spaun broke into the top 30 for the first time in his professional career. The victory saw him jump 32 spots from 57th to 25th on the Official World Golf Rankings.
J.J. Spaun lost the tournament in a three-hole aggregate playoff against Rory McIlroy. It was his third runner-up finish on the PGA Tour. Earlier this year, he finished as a runner-up at the Cognizant Classic. He surpassed big names like Adam Scott, Tom Kim, Tony Finau, Justin Rose, and others.
Spaun was ranked 112th in the world rankings at the end of the 2024 season. In the post-tournament press conference, Spaun was asked if he was on a great track. He responded (via ASAP Sports):
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"Yeah, totally. This is probably the best golf I've played maybe in my career consistently. I had a chance to win at Sony, had a pretty good chance to win at Cognizant, had a chance to win this week."
"But to go from where I was a year ago today or to start the week, I'm pretty proud of where I've been able to dig deep and get some self-belief and get some confidence to play some good golf. A year ago this was the first cut I made all season. Now I lost in a playoff. Kind of a big flip there," he added.
Rory McIlroy, who won the tournament, surpassed Xander Schauffele and jumped from third to second on the OWGR rankings. Tom Hoge, Akshay Bhatia, and Lucas Glover tied for third at the tournament.
Hoge jumped from 73rd to 50th, Bhatia jumped from 31st to 21st, and Glover jumped from 44th to 33rd after the conclusion of THE PLAYERS Championship.
J.J. Spaun says that his switch in "attitude" is helping him play better in 2025
In the post-tournament press conference, J.J. Spaun was asked what factors had contributed to him playing the best golf of his life in 2025. The 2002 Valero Texas winner said that his perspective on golf had changed and he considered good and bad results as just part of the sport.
Talking about how golf wasn't his only priority any more, J.J. Spaun said (via ASAP Sports):
"I think that's where I kind of flipped the switch on my attitude last year where I was playing really poorly and I was thinking to myself, well, this is my eighth year on TOUR; if this is how I'm going to go out, then this is it."
"Kind of in the mid-point of the season, I said, just go out and grind your butt off, dig deep, and if it's meant to be, you can keep playing out here, it'll happen. That's kind of when it happened, when I started playing better. I didn't really care so much," he added.
Spaun won $2.725 million of the $25 million prize purse at the Players Championship. He also received 500 FedEx Cup points and jumped from 15th to 5th in the FedEx Cup standings.
