TPC Sawgrass has a way of putting together entertaining leaderboards year-in and year-out. Household names, such as Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Collin Morikawa, and Justin Thomas usually have real estate there. But so do longshots and dark horses, a testament to the brilliant volatility that this course provides.
One of those underdogs is J.J. Spaun, who began Saturday’s third round in solo third at 10-under par and one shot off the lead. He is also playing in the penultimate pairing with McIlroy, thus setting up quite the dichotomy since the Northern Irishman is perhaps the most popular player in the sport not named Tiger Woods.
Yet, Spaun is the man everyone should root for this weekend — the perfect underdog whose life could change for the better with a win on Sunday.
A native of Los Angeles, Spaun played collegiately at San Diego State, where he earned Mountain West Conference Player of the Year honors in 2012. He then turned professional, playing his way through PGA Tour Canada and the Korn Ferry Tour before earning PGA Tour membership in 2017. After making 147 career starts, Spaun won his first PGA Tour victory at the Valero Texas Open five years later — finally reaching the mountaintop 10 years after becoming a pro. But he has not won since.
He has thus had to grind his way on the practice range, working countless hours daily to keep his PGA Tour card for another year. That includes plenty of practice rounds, too, many of which have come with Curt Byrum of NBC Sports.
However, all that hard work left Spaun short of the FedEx Cup Playoffs a year ago. But he then went on to have a solid fall, highlighted by a T-6 at the ZOZO Championship in Japan. He then parlayed that stretch into a terrific first few months of 2025, which includes three top-15s. He also finished runner-up at the Cognizant Classic and had an excellent opportunity to win the Sony Open in Hawaii. But a bogey on the par-3 17th, in which he hit a poor bunker shot, kept him one shot out of the playoff won by Nick Taylor. It was a brutal blow since he held the 54-hole lead. His second career PGA Tour title would have to wait.
Yet, his relative success and strong play thus far in 2025 have come at a cost.
After posting a 4-under 68 on Friday at TPC Sawgrass, Spaun walked off the golf course feeling rather guilty about himself. Not because he did anything wrong or got away with any lucky breaks, but because he is a family man at heart — an individual who loves his wife Melody and daughters Emerson and Violet more than anything. This week marks his ninth event of the year, meaning he is on the road more often than not — a challenging reality that the 34-year-old Spaun has struggled to come to grips with.
“It’s tough. I don’t know how to deal with it,” Spaun said Friday.
“I try to talk to them as much as I can, FaceTime, but when you have a little one that’s just always asking where you’re at and how much they miss you and to come home, it’s tough. My family fortunately knows that Daddy has a job, and this is what I have to do. Hopefully it will pay off dividends in the end when things are all said and done, and we can have a good time together.”
Luckily for Melody, she has help from nannies and a supportive extended family. But her husband has been home for only one week this season, a testament to the challenging life of being a middling PGA Tour professional.
He was gone a lot last year too, playing in 28 events, none of those being the four major championships. The year before, Spaun teed it up 32 times, which included a missed cut at the PGA Championship at Oak Hill — the last major he has played in to date.
“I just have so many responsibilities with my family and my kids and just wanting to be a dad and balancing life and family life,” Spaun said.
“You hear a lot of people say that when they first have children, and I didn’t really think that. I was still like golf, golf, golf. But now that my oldest one is four and, you know, there’s lots of emotion when I leave and when I come back. So it puts things in perspective on what really matters.”
Despite the challenges of being on the road so often, he knows he has terrific support from home. Having a solid family to lean on has helped him so far in 2025, even though Spaun has racked up more airline frequent flier miles than he could count.
And that is why you should root for Spaun for the remainder of this championship.
A win at TPC Sawgrass would go a long way for him and his family. Not only would he take home a $4.5 million check — Spaun has never made more than $3 million throughout any season in his career. But a win would also give him much needed security and plenty of perks. Players champions receive PGA Tour membership for the next five seasons and invitations into The Masters, U.S. Open, PGA Championship, and The Open for the next three years. Having the privilege to play in the four majors solidifies a player’s schedule. and would thus allow Spaun to spend more time at home and not play every week like he does now.
It would also give him more time to take his family to his beloved Disneyland, where he holds a season-pass.
It’s not like Spaun will have to battle for PGA Tour membership in 2026, though. His strong start to 2025 has him sitting pretty in the FedEx Cup standings. He’s currently 15th and is second in the Aon Next 10, meaning he has a pathway into the remaining big-money Signature Events. But he is still the underdog this week, a role he is relishing in at the midway point of the championship.
“I feel like that’s kind of the mentality that I have this week. I feel really kind of freed up. Like I have nothing to lose,” Spaun said.
“I’m in a great spot to make a run at top 50, top 30 by the end of the year. Just keep playing good golf and just try to feel like I got nothing to lose.”
He may have nothing to lose, but Spaun has everything to gain — and more valuable than anything, a win at TPC Sawgrass would allow him to spend more time with his wife and daughters, which would be the biggest perk of them all.
Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. Follow him on X @jack_milko.
