J.J. Spaun was not supposed to be the story at Wentworth this week. The BMW PGA Championship draws a strong field most years without needing a snub to make headlines, and Spaun himself had spent the build-up talking happily about a course he loves and a country he visits every Christmas. Then he birdied four of his last five holes for a closing 67, watched Manuel Elvira make a mess of the 18th from a tying position, and walked off with the trophy at 17 under, two shots clear. The golf was good enough on its own. The context made it better.
Ten days earlier, Brandt Snedeker had called Spaun on a Monday morning, moments after he landed in Phoenix, and told him in a conversation Spaun later put at forty-five seconds that he would not be one of the six captain’s picks for this month’s Presidents Cup at Medinah. Spaun had finished tenth on the points list, played well at last year’s Ryder Cup, and by his own account left the call believing he would make the team anyway. He did not hide how that landed.
A short phone call, a long memory
“I played with a huge chip on my shoulder,” Spaun said afterwards. “I definitely had something to prove this week. But everything happens for a reason. I wanted to prove that I deserve to be on that team. I took care of my business this week.” Asked directly whether the win was a message to his captain, he was careful rather than combative, noting only that the two had not spoken since. It did not need spelling out. A player omitted from a team event goes and wins the most prestigious individual title open to him the following week, in the country most of that team will fly out from, and the point makes itself.
J.J. Spaun makes THREE birdies in a row to take the solo lead at Wentworth 🇺🇸#BMWPGA | #RolexSeries pic.twitter.com/XXLS7DhXTM
— DP World Tour (@DPWorldTour) September 20, 2026
That run of three straight birdies on the closing stretch was the moment the leaderboard tipped. Spaun had been lurking rather than leading for most of the week, the sort of position that lets a player watch the course play out in front of him before deciding whether to press. He pressed. Rory McIlroy, who had briefly threatened to make it a home celebration for the European galleries, could not sustain his own surge and finished tied for second, level with Elvira and Adam Scott.
The collapse that sealed it
Elvira’s finish deserved better than the way it ended. He had made a nine-foot eagle putt at the par-five 17th to draw level with Spaun, the kind of putt that should have set up a genuine head-to-head down the last. Instead his tee shot on 18 found trouble, the lay-up finished in a bunker, the next shot ran through the green, and a chip that needed to be delicate finished in another bunker. A double bogey turned a share of the lead into a two-shot defeat in the space of four swings, the sort of finish that will sit with Elvira longer than most Sundays do.
For Spaun, the celebration afterwards had nothing to do with any of that. His first move once the putt dropped was a phone call home. “Daddy won! Daddy won!” is not the kind of quote that needs annotation.
"Daddy won! Daddy won!"
— DP World Tour (@DPWorldTour) September 20, 2026
Celebrating with a call to the kids ❤️#BMWPGA | #RolexSeries pic.twitter.com/BFbvNyspdW
Good company to be in
Spaun becomes only the third American to win the BMW PGA Championship, after Arnold Palmer and Billy Horschel, and there is a strange little pattern sitting underneath that fact. This is the third year running the title has gone to a player who had just missed out on a team spot. Horschel won it in 2024 the week before the Presidents Cup in Montreal, a team he was not part of. Alex Noren won it in 2025 having narrowly missed a place on Europe’s Ryder Cup side. Whatever it is about Wentworth and wounded pride, it keeps producing the same result.
The Presidents Cup begins at Medinah on Thursday without Spaun in the field, and he says he will be watching rather than sulking about it, wishing the team well in the same breath he used to describe playing “with a huge chip on my shoulder.” Snedeker’s selection may yet look perfectly reasonable by Sunday night in Illinois. It will not change what happened at Wentworth, or how directly Spaun answered the phone call that started it.