Five things you need to know about 54-hole Players leader J.J. Spaun
As winds whipped and wreaked havoc on the field Saturday at TPC Sawgrass, J.J. Spaun withstood.
Half of the 72 players still competing carded at least one double bogey or worse in Round 3, but not Spaun, who carded 2-under 70 to push to 12 under and grab a one-shot lead with 18 holes to play in this Players Championship.
Though he's enjoying a career year so far, ranked 15th in the FedExCup race entering the week, Spaun is certainly a surprise 54-hole leader in the PGA Tour's flagship event.
And for those who aren't too familiar with the 34-year-old Spaun, here's what you need to know about how he got here:
Skater boy
When Spaun was a kid, he’d hit balls into a net in his family’s garage. When he’d run out, he’d start hitting miscellaneous items, including sockets from his dad John’s toolbox.
In elementary school, Spaun added skateboarding as a passion, though he admittedly didn’t have the guts to do “anything big.” One day, John Spaun ran outside to find J.J. laying in the middle of the street, having just been hit by a car.
“Luckily, none of the wheels went over him, but he had this streak of oil all the way down his body,” John Spaun said.
It was no surprise that when J.J. told his dad that he wanted to be a professional skater, not golfer, when he grew up, John simply replied, “No.”
From walk-on to All-American
Spaun was a standout at San Dimas High, yet he garnered little interest from colleges. He’d walk on at San Diego State and wasted little time earning a full scholarship. Spaun ended his college career with a pair of All-America selections and five individual wins, including three as a senior in 2011-12, the same season in which Spaun, the Mountain West Player of the Year, led the Aztecs to match play at the NCAA Championship at Riviera.
“We get a lot of kids with a little chip on their shoulder,” San Diego State head coach Ryan Donovan said.
Spaun certainly fit that mold.
Diabetes misdiagnosis
Spaun racked up four top-3 finishes, including a runner-up at the 2017 RSM Classic, in his first two seasons on the PGA Tour.
But by late summer in 2018, the 5-foot-7 Spaun, 217 pounds at his heaviest, had inexplicably started to lose weight, which was accompanied by extreme lethargy. He was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes that fall, only to see his problems worsen over the next few years despite an improved diet and fitness regimen.
Having plummeted from just outside the top 100 in the world rankings to nearly outside the top 600, Spaun saw a specialist and discovered he was misdiagnosed; he was actually a Type 1 diabetic.
“I was doing the wrong things,” Spaun said. “The regimen for Type 2 is a little different than for a Type 1; I’m not even getting the right medicine to regulate my blood sugar. … I was eating nothing, probably less than 1,500 calories a day, and still having high-glucose side effects as a ‘Type 2,’ so that’s why I needed the insulin to help level that out and be able to eat more calories in general.”
Losing card
While the pandemic saved Spaun from losing his PGA Tour membership at the end of the 2019-20 season, he wasn’t so lucky the following season. Despite finally getting his diabetes under control, Spaun missed 14 of 26 cuts and posted just one top-10 finish in 2020-21, and he finished No. 174 in FedExCup points.
Yet, Spaun didn’t give up, regaining his card via the 2021 Korn Ferry Tour Finals.
“I think maybe that was the best thing for me,” Spaun said on an episode of Golf.com’s Subpar Podcast. “It’s not like it was a mental thing that I was taking for granted of being on Tour, but it was like, wow, you had something you wanted so badly and now it’s gone. Not even conditional status. I don’t know, I think going to Boise and finishing second, I think that gave me a little of my confidence back and knowing you are obviously going to go through some bad times and play bad golf, but there’s still some spark there and still some light at the end of the tunnel.”
Spaun has finished inside the top 100 in points in each season since.
Tour breakthrough
Already owning a victory apiece on PGA Tour Canada and the Korn Ferry Tour, Spaun earned his maiden PGA Tour title at the 2022 Valero Texas Open.
During that win, Spaun double-bogeyed the first hole of his final round, yet he played bogey-free golf the rest of the way while adding five birdies to win by two shots over Matt Jones and Matt Kuchar.
"Honestly, it didn't bother me as you would think," said Spaun, who became the first player since Tiger Woods at the 2008 U.S. Open to double his 55th hole and win. "If anything, it kind of calmed me down. … I knew there was still a lot of golf, and I'd rather double the first hole than the last hole, if I was patient and plugged away, I might put myself in contention."
Spaun has been in contention a lot so far this year. Through eight tournaments, he has two top-3s, a T-3 at the Sony Open and T-2 at the Cognizant Classic. His WD at the WM Phoenix Open is his only missed weekend.
He is also ranked seventh in strokes gained: approach; he was No. 145 in that category in 2019-20.
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