[Photo: Getty images]
Rory McIlroy’s second career Players Championship victory was unlike anything he’d experienced.
On a cold, windy morning of St Patrick’s Day, the Northern Irishman returned for a three-hole aggregate playoff at 9am on Monday against American JJ Spaun. The pair forced a playoff when they tied at 12-under-par in regulation after a weather-delayed final round.
It was all but over in 20 minutes Monday morning as McIlroy made an opening birdie at the par-5 16th before Spaun rinsed his tee shot on the par-3 17th. Spaun made a triple-bogey 6 on 17 and conceded the playoff on the 18th green.
“It feels strange to win a golf tournament at 10am in the morning [on a Monday] and I feel like I can’t have a drink yet,” McIlroy said, laughing. “It is St. Patrick’s Day, though.”
The 35-year-old McIlroy joined Tiger Woods and an illustrious group of dual Players Championship winners. It was his 28th career PGA Tour win and arguably his biggest victory since his maiden Players Championship title in 2019.
Aside from the green costumes, Monday morning finish and Irish national holiday, this win felt different. McIlroy said the feeling was palpable that the Players had grown in stature each year since 2019, incrementally closer to the “unofficial fifth major” nickname it has adopted.
“Back in ’19 I maybe didn’t appreciate how big this tournament was and how much it meant,” McIlroy, who with the win rose to world No.2 behind Scottie Scheffler, said. “Every time we come back to this tournament, it gets bigger and better. I don’t want to put any sort of label on it, but it is one of the biggest championships in the world.”
Those championships don’t get any bigger than the four majors. They’ve eluded the former world No.1 cruelly over the past three years. He has 13 top 10s at the grand slams since his 2019 Players win without capturing a fifth career major victory. Notably, McIlroy missed two short putts in the throes of the US Open final round at Pinehurst last year to hand Bryson DeChambeau a win. He was also runner up by one shot at the 2023 US Open and third after at the 150th Open Championship at St Andrews in 2022 after leading by four going into the final day.
“The [2024] US Open was hard,” he said. “It’s a long career. You have to stay incredibly patient. I would say that some of those losses have helped me learn what to do when I’m in those positions again.”
McIlroy hopes to be in that position again in just under a month, at the Masters. He needs a win at Augusta National to complete the career grand slam, something only Woods, Jack Nicklaus and three other legends have achieved. McIlroy has two PGA Championships (2012, 2014), and a US Open (2011) and Open Championship (2014) in his majors trophy cabinet.
Having won a Signature event at Pebble Beach in February and the Players, McIlroy said that his march towards golfing immortality will look a lot like it has in 2025. He said Monday’s playoff was the most nervous he’d been in a long time and had struggled to sleep. But the tee shots on 16, a driver, and 17, a flighted 9-iron over water, were a good litmus test ahead of Augusta.
“I think feeling like that and being able to hit the golf shots I needed to (will benefit me going into the majors),” McIlroy said. “I think I’ll just double down on what I’m doing. Double down on the work that I’ve been doing at home. Double down on the conversations I’ve been having with [sports psychologist] Dr Bob Rotella. It’s just continuing to do the same things.”
