JJ Spaun bagged a sensational eagle on the penultimate hole to warm up for the Masters with a dramatic one-shot victory at the PGA Tour’s Valero Texas Open on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Spaun<\/a> carded a five-under-par closing 67 at the TPC San Antonio Oaks Course to finish the tournament with a 17-under aggregate 271.<\/p>\n That was enough to vault the 2025 US Open champion, who had started the final round tied for fourth, to the top of the leaderboard ahead of England’s Matt Wallace<\/a>, Scotland’s Robert MacIntyre<\/a> and Michael Kim<\/a>, who finished on 16 under.<\/p>\n The signature moment for Spaun came on the par-four 306-yard 17th, when his tee shot landed on the green and rolled to within 10 feet of the flag.<\/p>\n He duly made the putt for eagle to move to five under for the day, and then held his nerve to make a crucial up-and-down par on the par-five 18th.<\/p>\n The victory couldn’t have been better timed for Spaun, who won his first PGA Tour victory at San Antonio in 2022, but who has endured a rough start to 2026.<\/p>\n “This game is so crazy,” Spaun said afterwards. “I haven’t been feeling at the form that I wanted to be based off of last season. Just trying to take each day as it comes and accepting what I have.<\/p>\n “Just means a lot to come back and win here at a place that’s been so good to me.”<\/p>\n Spaun had missed the cut in four of his seven outings so far this season, with his highest finish before this week a tie for 24th place at The Players Championship last month.<\/p>\n But now the 35-year-old will head to Augusta for next week’s Masters in fine fettle as he hunts a second major championship.<\/p>\n Spaun said adopting a more relaxed approach had been behind this week’s improved form.<\/p>\n “I put a lot of pressure on myself this year to start the year, and a lot of expectations,” he said.<\/p>\n “It’s the complete opposite of the mantra I had all year last year that really helped me, so I tried to get back to that.<\/p>\n “Went into the last few weeks, starting at The Players just trying to be freed up and put less pressure on myself.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JJ Spaun bagged a sensational eagle on the penultimate hole to warm up for the Masters with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":516884,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-516883","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}