For the third time in his professional golf career, J.J. Spaun of Los Angeles, California has won on the PGA Tour. After winning the 2022 Valero Texas Open and 2025 United States Open, Spaun won his second Valero Texas Open on Sunday. The victory had significance because it was the final PGA Tour event before the first major of the season, the 2026 Masters from Augusta, which starts on Thursday.
Spaun posted a winning score on Sunday of -17. He defeated Matt Wallace of London, England, Michael Kim of San Diego, California and Robert MacIntryre of Oban, Scotland by a stroke. Wallace, Kim and MacIntyre were tied for second place at -16. Three more golfers were still in contention. Andrew Putnam of Tacoma, Washington and Ludvig Aberg of Eslov, Sweden were tied for fifth place at -15, and Kevin Yu of Taoyuan, Taiwan finished all alone in seventh place at -14.
It interesting that none of the six golfers who were in the hunt, but did not win the title, were not a major champion. It makes one think that Spaun had the advantage down the stretch because he not only was a major champion in the past, but had won at TPC San Antonio too. When he won the 2022 Valero Texas Open, Spaun had a winning score of -13, and beat Australia’s Matt Jones and American Matt Kuchar by two strokes.
This past weekend, Spaun had a first round score of three-under-par 69, a second round score of three-under-par 69, a third round score of six-under-par 66, and a fourth round score of five-under-par 67. Spaun’s most notable shot was an eagle on the par four 17th on Sunday. He had a 301 yard tee shot and then made a nine foot, seven inch putt.
With the win, Spaun increased eight places in the Official World Golf Rankings. He moved from 13th to fifth in the world.
