Players Championship Sunday: Who ya got, Rory McIlroy or J.J. Spaun?
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Hello and welcome to this edition of the Golf Channel Podcast with Rex and Lab. We are going extra innings here at the Players' Championship. It took, what Rex, 12 hours for the final round to get here.

of the player's championship to be completed. And yet we were spilling into Monday, a three-hole aggregate playoff beginning at 9 a.m. Eastern time. There will be coverage on Golf Channel between Roy McIlroy and JJ Spahn. It has been a marathon day, Rex. What is your biggest takeaway from TBC Sawgrass? You're very selfish.

You're an exceedingly selfish person. And let's paint the picture. You and I are standing on the 16th by the 16th green, the par five Rory is finishing up his round and you are trying to talk a tour official into the idea that it's too dark that they shouldn't be playing. And why did you want them to stop playing?

I'm not going to get into that. Yes, it did involve, if they did complete the Players' Championship on Sunday evening, it would have meant a marathon evening for us. Not just doing the TV pod. It would have appeared, of course, on Golf Channel at 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. Eastern Time. We do appreciate your support. We also would have had to write game stories, columns, sidebars, features, things.

Look aheads, follows, and the like. We would have stayed very late. Instead, we get extra golf. We get extra golf, compelling golf, and we certainly had a compelling final round that unfolded here at TBC Sawgrass.

And look, not nearly as many people are going to tune in tomorrow morning. We know the way it works on a Monday morning finish, but it will be compelling. Those three holes are going to be fun. These two players are going to be fun. They're at opposite ends of the spectrum. And I will say I was processing this in real time as I was watching Rory finish up on 18 and then JJ spawn right behind him and the last group. And I needed to find a TV. So I went and found our friends from Sky Sports and it was Nick Doherty,

and Rich Beam. And we started, I immediately started the conversation with, I felt like Rory was not very aggressive on 18. He hit an iron, a beautiful iron. Some might say a sexy iron that just carved perfectly down the fairway. And then he had a little bit further back and hit a wedge that spun back and never really gave him a legitimate chance for birdie. And we can dissect those last holes between the end of the rain delay. And when they finished up the round, but as I was saying those words,

It dawned on me that if you're Rory McIlroy, and I'm going to go to the other side on this in a minute, so stick with me. If you're Rory McIlroy, of course you're looking up at the leaderboard and you're thinking to yourself, sure, I'll take my chances in a three-hole playoff on Monday against J.J. Spahn, someone who has only won once on the PGA Tour, never seriously contended in a major championship. We can keep going on. It has an awful record at TPC Sawgrass, all of those things. So I kind of see both sides competing.

of this. I kind of see the idea that no, Rory did not have his best stuff after the lay. He had, I think you and I discussed it. We had six, essentially six and a half holes remaining. He played those in even par. He made a birdie right out of the gate, and then he made a bogey on the most difficult hole in the golf course, number 14. So we had a colleague that came up and asked us, is this like Pinehurst last year for the US Open? And I was real quick to dismiss that. No, I don't feel like he gave this away. He clearly didn't have his best stuff coming down the stretch.

But no, I feel like what happened coming down the stretch is what happens in any big event. And then you factor in there was a four hour rain delay. You sat around. You didn't really have your right rhythm. I think what we ended up with was more byproduct of that. Yeah. I mean, let's.

Let's rewind just a little bit. A four-hour weather delay, which we had here Sunday at TBC Sawgrass, that is a long time. And there was a lot of indecision. There was a lot of uncertainty whether this track was going to miss us, if it was going to continue to linger through the day. Would they just call it for the rest of the day and resume and play what?

what, seven, eight, nine holes on Monday mornings. And so it was this sort of wait and see, which if you are going to be inside the ropes competing for one of the biggest titles in all of golf, that would be probably pretty unnerving waiting to see when exactly you're going to go out. J.J. Spahn said he was inside the tournament performance center putting on some, what was it, a speed wave or something? Essentially, he was putting on some goggles and

and trying to basically have some positive self-talk just to kill the time. Roy McIlroy said he watched a kickabout game, a soccer game to sort of pass the time as well. But it was a little bit unnerving just waiting to see when you were going to go out. The initial shots, Rex, like I went out there on 12 green awaiting Roy McIlroy's approach upon the restart. Like he hit it to 10 feet.

He ended up making birdie a hole behind JJ spawn left himself. And basically the worst possible spot you, you could coming back from a lengthy delay, a 60 yard bunker shot. First, third shot in the par five 11th hit a terrible shot from there. Ended up three putting for bogey at that point. And basically the course of seven minutes, I said, this thing's over. Like Roy McIlroy had staked himself to a seven shot lead or excuse me, a three shot lead. He had,

what, six holes to play at that point. I thought it was over. I think it's sort of a sneak into Rory's psyche that it wasn't necessarily over. And I think also you have to give a lot of credit to J.J. Spahn, who said he had nothing to lose at that point, put his head down, ended up making two birdies over his last five holes to get himself into the playoff. Do you look at this, Rex, as J.J. Spahn having a lot of

momentum heading into the playoff? Or do you look at this as Roy McIlroy with a much needed reset and hoping that he has some better stuff when he comes out again on Monday morning?

I don't think either player had a tremendous amount of momentum coming into it. And it was called a shift wave chair, by the way. I actually put it in the private chat if you want to take a look at the link. Because as he was walking away, JJ Spahn, as he was walking away from reporters, he actually leaned into the microphone and said, please sponsor me. So I'm going to do the same. We'll take it. We'll take it. Shift wave. Apparently it's magical and it turned him around. I think for Rory, it...

And it's not as though he was playing his best golf to begin with before or after. And I will say he finished 400 for the day. And three of those unders were on his first two holes. He had a magical start. He started birdie eagle. Everyone got behind him. Everyone got got excited. And then I think he slowed down. I think TPC Sawgrass got him to be quite frank. The winds came up as the weather approach as a cold front approached on the other side of it. I think JJ Spahn was able to use the break as a bit of a reset.

I asked him specifically and he said, yes, absolutely. He got some food. He started thinking about it and he knew exactly where he was. And that's pretty intimidating. And it's pretty impressive to know that I'm three strokes down with essentially six holes to play to Rory McIlroy on a really difficult golf course. And I'll give him a lot of credit. And I will say JJ was the first one to point out that no one's probably rooting for me tomorrow.

Outside of my immediate family, no one is probably rooting for me tomorrow. But I think you and I both, after talking with him tonight and last night, he's worth rooting for. Like, he's a really interesting guy. And I think everything he's done to get to where he is right now, I think he did a good job sort of painting the picture of his story. He was pretty much done at the end of last season. He was ready to walk away from professional golf. And he ended up finishing strong to that season, had a decent fall, and has played really well so far this season. He didn't finish inside the top 70. He wasn't in the signature event.

So he's had to do it through the A on 10. So I think it's impressive. And I'm not going to go down chalk. And I know I picked Rory to win at the beginning of the week. And I think I picked him. Whoa, slow down, soldier. This is the seven minute mark of the podcast. No, no, no. I think like I've kind of come around and this has nothing to do with Rory or the way he's playing. I'm just very impressed with the way JJ Spahn has navigated this golf course for 72 holes. That was really hard golf.

Over the weekend. And you never really know what's going to happen over those final three holes. I will say, I was so curious. Would you like to venture a guess of the way Rory McIlroy has played those last three holes this week? I don't feel like he's played 16 particularly well. I don't recall him making a birdie on 17. And he made one birdie on 18.

So I would say maybe one or two under par. He's even par. JJ is one under. So it's kind of a wash. Not a huge spread right there. But to JJ's point, anything can happen on those last three holes. And look, even though you and I have to come back in the morning, I am looking forward to it. Oh, I think it's going to be fantastic. And we do want to give JJ Spahn his spot.

Flowers. Celebration. Let's give him a celebration. And we will do that shortly. I want to hone in first, Rex, on Rory. Because again, he was three shots ahead with six holes to play. What sort of unfolded

over that pass over the last hour and a half, I thought was, was really interesting. You look at what happened on 13, the par three, he barely missed the ridge that would have carried that ball down on the par three and said he sort of had to lag it down 14. I think he actually got pretty lucky. He could have been sort of the vegetation. He blew that tee shot. I was standing right behind the tee. What, what?

wide right, miles right. Got lucky not to go in the vegetation. Got lucky not to go in the pond on 12 as well. Missed about a 15-footer. On 15, that's when the mistakes started happening. Missed a 5-footer. On 16, sort of got defensive with a chip going down the hill. Left himself about 12 feet. Didn't handle that one as well. Got a little bit unlucky again on 17. Hit the ball in the correct spot. The ball funneled down. The ball nestled right up against the collar of the ruff, which is a little bit longer, it seems like.

this year. If that was just, you know, a couple inches closer, he's got a 12 footer straight up the hill, not a whole lot to it. Instead, he sort of had to, to, to work around that with this putter. And then again, you mentioned it, although he had 180 yards into the home hole, there'd been just one birdie there all day long. Just, just too much juice on what I would assume would be like an eight iron going a little bit down with. So like nothing, nothing horrible as it comes to like the five footer that he missed on Friday,

on 15 and the shorty he also missed on 16. He said he just had a hard time reading those putts in the dark. I asked you, I think that Roy does have glasses. So in this case, I think he's wearing contact lenses. I did wonder like,

With the poor light that we had, he mentioned like a cell that was moving in. So it got darker than it probably would have been at 630. Like it can be hard to read putts. That's what he sort of blamed those shots on. How about J.J. Spahn and sort of the attitude, Rex, that he adopted? You know, nothing to lose. That seems like a pretty powerful motivator as he now heads into a three-hole aggregate playoff.

No, it really is. And I think you're the one that asked him about the headspace that he was in at the moment. And he clearly is in a really good headspace. And if you compare the resumes, I think JJ Spahn is probably right. Not many people are going to be rooting for him on Monday morning. But actually, it's impossible not to like his chances. If you look at what he has done, just statistically, if you break it down across the board, he's probably played this golf course better than anyone else. He's where he probably should be.

right now. He hasn't made huge mistakes. To your point, you look at Rory McIlroy on 14. That ball could have easily bounced into a position that double bogey was probably the best he possibly could have done. J.J. Spahn really hasn't had those moments. And I did think it was funny because he came back from that four-hour delay, and he faced the hardest shot you could possibly face in all of golf. It was a 60-yard bunker shot with wet sand.

And he gave a great story about how he was trying to figure out. I could have just chipped it like a normal shot almost because the sand was sort of matted down because it was wet. And he goes, but I hadn't really practiced it. And it would have been easy to make the bogey there and fall three strokes back at that point and kind of spiral. I've never really been in this position before. That guy's number two in the world. He's done a lot of really good things in his career. And he didn't.

I mean, J.J. Spahn said this was the most pressure that he'd ever played under. It wasn't all that surprising to hear, of course, because he is just a single-time winner on the PGA Tour, the 2022 Valero Texas Open. But I think sort of the nerves, the anxiety, the stress showed up on the greens, right? Because he'd been putting pretty well. He was the only player in the field who was top 20 in every major statistical category. Still hit it okay. He was certainly much better after the rain delay, the four-hour break that he took. But on the greens, right, he was 69th.

out of 72 players in putting 34 putts, just 42 feet worth of putts made by comparison. Rory hit it much better and still didn't get a whole lot out of his round. But I'll be curious to see if J.J. Spahn sort of reverts to the mean and fills it up a little bit more when play resumes on Monday morning. I want to go back to something that he said when I was sort of pressing him on this is, you know, he said that he feels like he has nothing to lose. And when he said it,

and how he showed himself on Sunday. He doesn't have to shy away from the moment, and he did that by going two under over his last five holes. I immediately hearken back to something that we heard from Thomas Dietry after he blew away the field in the final round at the WN Phoenix Open about six weeks ago, and it was Thomas Dietry admitting that,

that he has been afraid of failure. He shied away from the moment. He didn't want the pressure. And it sort of came to an epiphany that this is why he plays. You know, there's nothing to be afraid of. This is what I've been training my entire life. I need to go seize it as opposed to shying away from it. That is essentially what JJ Spahn was saying as well, that he showed himself on Sunday to not be worried about failure. You know, it paid off today.

that he was able to sort of withstand the early wave, the early onslaught, some poor shots, falling behind and still clawing his way back. I absolutely think when he steps to the 16th tee on Monday morning, he will legitimately believe that he can knock off the number two player in the world. And it is interesting. We asked both players, both Rory and JJ, about...

sort of their mindset going into Monday. We don't have very many three-hole playoffs, so it's not as though many people have much experience with that, and neither one of them did. As a matter of fact, J.J. Spahn didn't even know it was a three-hole playoff. He thought he was marching back out to 17 almost in the dark to finish this off tonight. And when we asked him, what's your strategy? And he sort of wrestled with it in real time, trying to figure out what, I don't know, like I guess I have to look at what he's doing and I need to feed off and sort of

play safely if he puts himself into trouble like it's very much a match play situation so that's going to be the fun part about tomorrow as well because it's not as though there's much experience on this front yeah so who you got who's your winner we'll resume on monday morning again 9 a.m eastern time on golf channel i'm still sticking with roy picked him at the beginning of the week picked him last night to win and i think you picked scotty at the beginning of the week you're

Coward. You have to check this tape on that one. I'm not entirely sure about that. Let's check the tape. Well, I certainly picked him last night, and I probably picked him the night before as well. And I just think he can probably make a really good statement right out of the gates on the 16th hole. I mean, that's a hole that he can really take advantage of. And J.J. Spahn is probably going to be at least 10, 15 yards behind him. And if he can make a statement on that hole, I think he can probably carry himself over. It's going to be such –

a small snapshot. We're going to be done probably by 10 a.m. tomorrow morning would be my guess, if not before. So, yeah, I'm going to do it. But it has been fun to watch what J.J. Spahn has done this week. Yeah, I'm with you. It's an interesting setup in a scenario because it's essentially just five full shots. You know, if you're warming up the range, you know that you have to do –

you know, you have to hit a driver on 16. You most likely need to hit either like a five wood or a long iron into 16. You're going to be hitting some sort of gap wedge on 17. If, if you're raw, you're probably going to be hitting a two iron or a three wood on 18. And then you're probably hitting a seven, eight, nine iron. Um, and so that's, that's it. You

You know, there'll be sudden death playoff after that, but those are the only shots that you need to hone in on. I think the 16th tee shot, the very first one of the day is going to set the tone. If you're Roy McIlroy, the distance that he hits it off the tee, he's going to have to curve it. We saw it again in the final round, tried to take driver, tried to blast up the right side, tried to turn it over to keep it away from the quick hook that he hit a couple of days ago, instead hits it in the right rough and sort of,

It's sort of a guessing game how it's going to come out of there and was unable to get it up and down for birdie. If he can hit sort of the big high booming draw, he will leave himself 20, 30, 40 yards behind.

ahead of J.J. Spahn and really put himself in a position to make a statement. I think the other hole... The gap's not that much. The gap probably won't be that much. I just looked it up just out of curiosity. He's averaging... Rory is averaging about 294 yards. J.J. is averaging about 287. Now, you have to factor out, like, not many of those are drivers. So, yeah, if you're right, if Rory goes after one and hits it, but I don't think it would be more than 20 yards.

Yeah, I mean, it's probably 20 yards. Again, it depends on the angle. Roy blasted 315 into the right rough. J.J. Spahn was about 295. Again, if Roy can get it turning over right to left, get a little bit of kick, it should be a different wind on Monday morning, which I think is also going to be interesting. It's going to be about 15 degrees cooler, wind out of the opposite direction. So 16 potentially could be playing downwind if, again, he can get that slinging and going. I think it's an opportunity to make –

a little bit of a statement there. JJ spawns tee shots on 18. Each of the past two days also leave me a little bit questioning if it was a tie scenario, what he can do on that hole. He's going to have to hit a fairway wood, if not a driver to give himself sort of a mid iron into that green. Whereas Rory, as he showed in the final round can just sling a two iron. That said,

I'm taking Roy McIlroy. I think it'll be very close. I hope it's a compelling finale because I do think this is a great way to end the tournament. Again, it'll be 9 a.m. Eastern time on Golf Channel on Monday morning streaming on Peacock as well. You and I, Rex, will have full coverage.

on the Golf Show podcast with Rex and that will be recording after the conclusion of that three-hole aggregate playoff. We'll also have plenty up on the website on NBCSports.com slash golf. We really did, didn't we, Rex? Appreciate all of the responses to where you guys listen to this podcast. Some were in the gym, some were while cooking, some were while having a great cigar with, I think, a whiskey. One person said, Rex, that they listened to our podcast while in the bath.

which we certainly appreciate as well. As long as you're downloading it, liking and subscribing to the page, we certainly do appreciate it. All right. That is going to do it for this edition. Thanks for listening. Thanks for the support. We'll talk to you guys on Monday morning. Experience the performance of Lexus Racing. The thunderous V8 engine. The black and day-glow yellow Lexus RCF GT3. A blur of speed and adrenaline. The sheer force of acceleration.

The physics-defying grip of the tires, the intensity of every corner, the precision of each maneuver. The sound of victory. Visit Lexus.com/motorsports to keep the thrill going.

There are some things in life that just shouldn't be forgotten, like bringing your keys when you leave the house, setting your fantasy lineup, and most importantly, having Hidden Valley Ranch to watch the game. Especially if wings are on the menu. Those creamy, zesty Cool Ranch flavors take each spicy, savory bite to an unforgettable level. Hidden Valley Ranch. Only serious about flavor.