A wildly entertaining Saturday came and went at TPC Sawgrass with few assurances made as to how this championship will end up. Sounds about right.
Here are the top numbers and notes to know entering the final round of the 2025 Players Championship.
1. Thanks to a 25-foot holed putt, J.J. Spaun made par from the pine straw at 18 on Saturday to take a one-shot lead into the final round of The Players. His gritty par to finish his round is a perfect embodiment of the turnaround he’s enjoyed on this course over the last three days. Entering the week, Spaun had a career scrambling rate of just 42 percent at TPC Sawgrass. Through 54 holes, he’s got it up and down 15 times in 19 tries (79 percent), the third-best rate in the field.
This is the fifth 54-hole lead or co-lead of Spaun’s PGA Tour career – he’s converted one, the 2022 Valero Texas Open, into his lone win. It’s the second time he’s led by one heading into Sunday this season: in January’s Sony Open, Spaun shot a final round 68 in that position and finished in a tie for third place.
Spaun will have to break an ominous run of players who held a solo, one-shot lead through 54 holes at this championship. Since 2007, nine players have been in this same position, including the likes of Jon Rahm (2019) and Xander Schauffele (2024). None of them went on to win.
2. Some 15 years ago, Bud Cauley was a can’t-miss professional golf prospect. He was a multiple-time All-American at Alabama, a member of the U.S. Walker Cup team, and turned pro before his senior season with the Crimson Tide. In just eight PGA Tour starts in 2011, he earned enough money to forego Q-School and go directly to the tour from college, a rare feat limited to names like Mickelson, Woods and a few others.
For a handful of years, the extremely high expectations were not quite met. Then in 2018, a car accident left him with a half-dozen broken ribs, collapsed lung and broken leg. Complications developed surrounding those severe injuries, putting Cauley’s career in serious question. Now, Cauley is within one shot of the lead entering the final round of a PGA Tour event for the first time in nearly 13 years (2012 Wyndham Championship).
Cauley entered the week needing 66 more FedExCup points in his next six PGA Tour starts to secure an extension of his major medical through the end of the season. With a win tomorrow, he would render that pursuit moot, earning a PGA Tour card through the end of 2030.
Cauley has just 72 putts through three rounds. The fewest putts for any player over 72 holes at TPC Sawgrass is 98 by Derek Fathauer 10 years ago. The fewest ever in a win at TPC Sawgrass is 101 by Cameron Smith in 2023.
3. Lucas Glover was nails for the better part of 14 holes Saturday before all hell broke loose. Glover made double bogey at the 15th, chipped in for eagle at 16, then gave it right back with another double at the infamous 17th hole. Despite the rocky finish, the veteran is three off the lead, the closest he has been entering the final round at TPC Sawgrass in 15 years (two back in 2010).
Glover, 45, is looking to be the oldest player to win The Players Championship since Fred Funk did it at 48 years young two decades ago. Glover won in back-to-back weeks a couple of years ago – with a win he would join Phil Mickelson as the only players in the last decade to win three or more titles at age 43 or older.
Glover is joined at 9-under by Alex Smalley, who made three bogeys in his last 10 holes after playing the first 45 of the week with just one. Smalley (and Cauley, for that matter) is trying to become the first American player to get his first career PGA Tour victory at The Players Championship, and just the third overall.
Cauley is looking for his first PGA Tour win on Sunday. (Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)
4. Rory McIlroy battled to a round of 73 on Saturday and will be four shots behind Spaun on Sunday. For the second time this week Rory was exceptionally wild off the tee, hitting just five fairways. He hit four in Round 1 before rebounding with 11 on Friday.
One day after rocking the back nine at Sawgrass with five birdies, McIlroy was seven shots worse on that side (38) on Saturday. His scorching-hot putting the previous six rounds went cold, as he did not hole anything longer than nine feet.
Still, McIlroy is four back and his shadow looms large amidst his peers near the top of the leaderboard. He has won 15 times on the PGA Tour when trailing after 54 holes, the most such wins of anyone since the beginning of the 2010 season. He was one back entering the final round of his win here in 2019.
5. Thirty-six hole co-leaders Akshay Bhatia and Min Woo Lee both struggled on Saturday, combining for a score of 9 over. After playing the first five holes in 3 over, Bhatia steadied the ship a bit and will enter Sunday four back of Spaun. Bhatia, at 23 years old the youngest 36-hole leader in Players history, found just six fairways and nine greens in regulation Saturday, both personal lows this week.
Lee managed just one birdie, a chip-in at 18, in a round of 78. It’s the highest third round score by a 36-hole leader at The Players Championship since Lee Westwood shot an 80 in 2005.
6. The sixth hole has been a topic of discussion all week after the decision to move a large, overhanging tree back into the player’s line of sight by the tee box. While nobody has plunked the 500,000-pound obstacle in competition this week, the hole has experienced significant statistical changes.
Through three rounds, the field is hitting the fairway at the 6th just 58.5 percent of the time, on pace for the lowest rate in 14 years. It’s the sixth-toughest hole on the course this week, a stark contrast from its ranking of 13th a year ago.
The 14th hole did not yield a single birdie on Saturday. It’s the first time since 2005 there wasn’t a single birdie on a hole in a round at The Players – that honor belonged to the 18th in the final round that year.
7. World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler shot 72 and will be six back entering the final round. Scheffler was on the verge of being a major factor before back-to-back bogeys at 16 and 17, the first time in 195 holes he made a score worse than par on consecutive holes at this championship.
The largest 54-hole deficit overcome to win at TPC Sawgrass is five strokes, done for a third time by Scheffler one year ago. To become the first player to three-peat in a PGA Tour event since Steve Stricker (John Deere Classic, 2009-11), he will need to match the largest final round comeback by a winner in tournament history – six by Raymond Floyd in 1981 at Sawgrass Country Club.
CARNAGE at TPC Sawgrass. pic.twitter.com/myNS2Q6vOQ
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) March 16, 2025
8. Justin Thomas couldn’t back up his record round on Friday with another hot round, carding 73 on Saturday. Thomas has assembled a bonkers sequence of scores over three days this week: 78, 62 and 73.
Thomas is the second player since The Players moved to TPC Sawgrass in 1982 to improve his score by 11 or more shots from Round 1 to Round 2, then do the opposite in Round 3. In 1998, Larry Rinker built an even more ludicrous golf rollercoaster, carding 78, 67 and 81 through three days.
9. Through three rounds, there have been just 30 balls in the water at the 17th hole. It’s the first time since 2010 that 11 or fewer shots at 17 found the drink in each of the first three rounds of The Players. While most players stayed dry on Saturday, the famed hole was by no means easy: the field was a combined +26, the highest score to par in Round 3 at 17 since 2006 (+40).
Overall, the scoring average in Round 3 was a touch over 74, more than two and a half strokes higher than on Friday. Approach shots averaged 43 feet from the hole on Saturday, more than seven feet farther away than the previous round.
10. Since 2000, there have been 16 Players Champions who trailed entering the final round. The only stop on the PGA Tour with more come-from-behind winners in that span is the Farmers Insurance Open, with 18.
All but one winner at TPC Sawgrass has been inside the top 10 entering the final round, and the exception wasn’t too far behind: Rickie Fowler was T11 in 2015 before going on to win in a playoff.
(Top photo of J.J. Spaun: Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)
