McIlroy mulls Masters prep after meh Players
He'll assess back over the next three weeks; Cam Young siezes his moment at Sawgrass
Rory McIlroy was relieved his back held up for four rounds at Players (Eston Parker/ISI Photos via Getty Images)
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — This was a far different outcome from the one a year ago, when Rory McIlory prevailed in a St. Patrick’s Day Monday playoff over J.J. Spaun to claim his second Players Championship title.
By the time Cameron Young was holing his short par putt to claim the Players trophy after a wild back nine at TPC Sawgrass, McIlroy had been comfortably at home in South Florida for hours.
A late-arrival due to the back problems that caused him to withdraw before the third round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational, McIlroy never really got in synch this time. He failed to shoot in the 60s and finished way back in a tie for 46th at even par.
McIlroy was nearly a cut casualty on Friday and was simply glad to make it to the weekend to get in the extra rounds.
Now he’s got a decision to make prior to his Masters defense next month. He’s not a given to play in his Tuesday night TGL semifinal appearance and there’s a question as to whether or not he’ll tee it up again over the next three week before heading to Augusta National.
“I’ll see,” McIlroy said after his final-round 71 that included two double bogeys. “I haven’t really made a decision either way. I’ll see how my body feels. We’ll see how I feel in practice and at home and if I get itchy feet at home maybe add an event at some point.
“I feel like it was important to make the weekend here and play an extra couple of days. But yeah, really just see how the next week goes … once I get back to actually a full practice schedule and in the gym and stuff like that, see how my body reacts to that, and then I’ll see.”
McIlroy is not playing this week’s Valspar Championship. His Boston Common TGL semifinal match Tuesday night seemed like a given, but now he’s participation against the Tiger Woods captained Jupiter Links team is to be determined on Monday. Last year, McIlroy played the Texas Children’s Houston Open, finishing tied for fifth two weeks prior to the Masters. He could also enter the Valero Texas Open the week prior to the Masters.
“Happy I got through four days and my body feels good,” McIlroy said. “I feel like my game sort of progressively got a little bit better as the week went on, even though the scores probably didn’t reflect it over the weekend. I hit the ball well. I just didn’t make anything on the greens.
“A couple little things to work on, but overall, not the week that I wanted. Just trying to take the positives.”
As for what a Players Championship performance means for the rest of year heading into the major season, McIlroy said it is mixed.
“Sometimes you feel like it tells you stuff, and then other times it sort of doesn’t,” he said. “I’ve had bad results here and went on to have a good season, and I’ve had good results here, and the two really good results here (wins in 2019 and 2025) I’ve went on to have good seasons. It’s a decent litmus test. I don’t think it’s the best in terms of telling where your game is at. It can get a little funky if you hit it in some spots.
“But I would say you have to be really on to shoot scores here. I guess it tells you a lot about that. I feel like I hit the ball well the last three days. I didn’t get a lot out of it. But I do feel like I saw some good signs even though the scores didn’t quite reflect it.”
Cameron Young came up clutch at the end to win the Players (Eston Parker/ISI Photos via Getty Images)
Young grabs his chance to win Players
Cameron Young stepped up on the big stage Sunday, hitting the biggest shots of his career on the 17th and 18th tees to left him over Matthew Fitzpatrick at the Players Championship.
Young claimed his first piece of the lead after stuffing his tee shot on the infamous island-green 17th to 10 feet to set up a clutch birdie to tie Fitzpatrick at 13-under. Then after a perfect 375-yard drive on the treacherous 18th hole — the longest ever on the 18th at the TPC Sawgrass — to set up a two-putt par, he claimed the second and biggest win of his career when Fitzpatrick missed an 8-foot par putt to try to force a playoff.
Young played bogey-free on the back nine when so many others could not, shooting 4-under 68 to finish 13-under par.
“It’s so loud on 17. You just know kind of all eyes are right there on you so there’s nowhere to hide," Young said. “And I feel like I stepped up really well and hit a bunch of good shots those last couple holes, so I’m very proud of that.”
Yound had tied the PGA Tour record with seven runner-up finishes before finally winning late last summer in the Wyndham Championship. His career near misses included finishing one shot short in the 2023 PGA (T3) and Open (solo second) Championships.
The Players is the PGA Tour’s flagship event, loosely known as the fifth major, and the pressure was just intense at the end as his major efforts.
Ludvig Åberg, who had a three-shot lead going into the final round, imploded on the back nine with shots into the water on consecutive holes at 11 and 12 leading to a bogey and double he never recovered from. He shot 40 on the back nine for a 76 and tied for fifth.
Fitzpatrick was the first to seize on Åberg’s collapse, hitting wedge to tap-in range for birdie on the 12th and a tee shot to 4 feet for birdie on the 13th to reach 13-under. Young hung within a shot with a birdie of his own on 13. Fitzpatrick fell into a tie with Young when he three-putted from 60 feet on the 14th, only to regain the lead with a 12-foot birdie on 15.
All tied at 18, both players had doubled the final hole in the third round. On Sunday, however, Young was committed to the line off the tee and thought “I’m going to hit the best shot of my life right here.”
“I don’t know if I can think of one that’s better,” he said. He hit it so far with the wind at his back that he had only 98 yards left, a lob wedge that settled on the fringe behind the flag 15 feet away.
Fitzpatrick’s drive went too far right into the pine straw and he pitched out just short of the green, then hit a decent chip to 8 feet.
“I felt like I hit a good drive,” Fitzpatrick said. “And once you’re out of position, it’s difficult to make your par.”
When Fitzpatrick missed his putt to force a playoff, Young was left with a tap-in par to finish at 13-under 275.
“The nerves kicked in over the 8-inch putt on the last,” Young said. “That hole looked really, really small there from pretty close range. So happy to have finished it off, and just really excited to have played the way I did.”
Young earned $4.5 million and moved to No. 4 in the Official World Golf Ranking. That’s a long way from where he was a year ago when his only goal was to make the Ryder Cup team at Bethpage Black in his native New York. His late-season success earned him a captain’s pick and he proved to be Team USA’s best player that week, going 3-1 and winning the leadoff singles match in the American rally that fell short.
Going head to head with England’s Fitzpatrick on Sunday, chants of “U-S-A! U-S-A!” broke out on the 17th tee as Young had the crowd on his side.
“That was literally child’s play compared to Bethpage,” Fitzpatrick said of the crowd. “If they think that that was anything, then they need to reassess. Get yourself up to New York.”
The 28-year-old Young said he drew from that Ryder Cup experience coming down the stretch. “Definitely some nerves, but also some confidence,” he said.
Xander Schauffele birdied three of his last four holes, including a 20-foot birdie on 18, to close with a 69 and finish third, one shot ahead of Robert MacIntyre.
Åberg poor finish was the big surprise. He was still two shots ahead and in the middle of the fairway on the par-5 11th when he flared his fairway wood out to the right and into the water, leading to bogey. On his next tee shot, he pulled it badly into the water, hit over the green and took three to get down for double bogey.
That put him three behind, and he never recovered.
“I would have loved to be standing where Cameron is standing right now,” Åberg said. “It definitely stings a little bit.”