Scottie Scheffler won his fourth straight Player of the Year award on Monday, beating out several competitors, Rory McIlroy top among them. The news was hardly a surprise. Scheffler and McIlroy dominated 2025, and while McIlroy carried the emotional vote – ending his decade-long pursuit of the career Grand Slam along with a notable Ryder Cup victory on away soil – Scheffler’s unrelenting greatness was too much to overcome. Scheffler won six times, including two majors and didn’t finish outside the top 10 over the last eight months of the year. Four nominees were up for the award, but it was a two-horse race from the beginning. Nobody would argue anybody else’s merits for the honor.

Yet as the dust settles on the 2025 PGA TOUR season, the nagging idea that a different player “won” the year has remained in this writer’s mind. This player didn’t accomplish the most. Nor did he capture the most headlines. He wasn’t even a nominee for player of the year. But compare where he was 12 months ago to the company he keeps now and the security he holds for the future, it’s hard to argue anyone else had a better year than J.J. Spaun.

Spaun’s a major champion and a Ryder Cupper now. A year ago, he was clinging to a PGA TOUR card.

“Sometimes I forget what I've done this year because it's been such a blur,” Spaun said at the Hero World Challenge earlier this month.

Spaun’s jaunt down to The Bahamas for Tiger Woods’ tournament was an apt encapsulation of the career-defining season he produced. It’s an event Spaun attended as a kid, when it was hosted at Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks, California, just a bit north of where he grew up in Los Angeles. It had moved to The Bahamas by the time he turned pro, though he never came close to qualifying for it anyway. Spaun was on vacation in London at the time of the tournament in 2024. That vacation happened again this year, just a week later. It was a concession Spaun was happy to make.

Scheffler had the most accomplished year. McIlroy’s was the most satisfying. Spaun’s was the most impactful.

The 35-year-old Spaun collected more than $13 million in on-course earnings in 2025, more than half of his 14-year career total. He locked in PGA TOUR status through 2030 and will return to the U.S. Open for another decade as a champion. He begins 2026 on the shortlist to make the U.S. Team for the Presidents Cup after he was one of the lone bright spots in an otherwise disappointing performance by the Americans at Bethpage Black. He went from an afterthought on TOUR to a revered pro, who few would be surprised to see win multiple times over the rest of his career.

Spaun hasn’t sat down and processed all of that yet.

“I would just love to have kept my card,” Spaun said of what his 2025 aspirations were. “Just give me a card, and you can have all the Hero (World Challenge)’s you want. As long as I got a full card on TOUR, like I was happy.

“At the time, yes, I was trying to keep my card because I had very little time left, but once I did that, I kind of said, 'Hey, like why are you just trying to keep your card? We need to contend. You want to be more comfortable in these final groups, you want to win. You're not here to just keep your job.' Yes, that's objective one, but I think when I changed my goals and my expectations, that's when I started to really kind of take the pressure off of just keeping your card and just trying to win tournaments. And playing better golf obviously helps with that, but I think it was a little bit of a mindset adjustment.”

Spaun saw results from the outset. He lost a final-round lead at the Sony Open in Hawaii, his first start of the year, but felt a mentality shift. While previously struggling with final-round anxiety, Spaun felt none of that angst as he attempted to close out the tournament. He lost in a playoff to Nick Taylor but left confident. Spaun told himself he no longer needed to fear the moment. The best athletes in the world embrace them. He could, too.

That came to a head at THE PLAYERS Championship two months later. Again, Spaun suffered a heartbreaking defeat, rinsing his tee shot at the island green, the par-3 17th, during a playoff to lose to McIlroy. To most, that seemed like Spaun’s one shot. We see this often with journeymen pros. They are all good enough to contend in the biggest tournaments, but normally, they only get one or two bites at the apple and fade into the background if they can’t capitalize.

Spaun proved different and determined. Those misses led to his breakthrough at the U.S. Open, when he buried a lengthy 72nd-hole birdie to shatter his demons and net the biggest win of his lifetime.

The U.S. Open changed the trajectory of Spaun’s career and how he will be remembered. Scheffler and McIlroy accomplished that, too, but they began with much more. They were secure before 2025 and would have been placed among the game’s best to ever live, regardless. Spaun might never get to that point, but if he does, 2025 will be the year it all started.

“It's just been an incredible ride,” Spaun said. “I'm finally seeing the hard work pay off.”