The standard carrier of the players’ championship for 2024 is Parker Neal
The standard carrier of the players of the year championship obtains the last group in the final on Sunday of the following year. Parker Neal had the honors.
- Bud Cauley, a former Jacksonville resident, has overcome a series of health challenges to match the sixth place in the players’ championship.
- The top 10 of the Top 10 of Cauley obtained its PGA Tour card for the rest of 2025 after playing on a major medical exemption for 13 months.
- Cauley’s performance to players marks a significant return after a car accident in 2018 and the subsequent medical complications have put it out for several years.
Ponte Vedra Beach – Until Bud Cauley received a phone call last week at the Bear’s Club of Jupiter to inform him of the withdrawal of Lee Hodges The players’ championship Put it in the field of 144 men, his weekend match plan was to “change the diapers” of his 6-week son and “do not sleep very well”.
Instead of changing the calendars of his son, the former resident of Jacksonville may have just changed the path of his formerly lost golf career.
Although the most buzz on the most buzz of the Gallery of the playing playing of the TPC Sawgrass stadium was reserved for the world star Rory McILroy ending with an equality with an unannounced Spaun JJ, forcing an eliminatory series of three holes on Monday, it was hardly the most comforting story of the players.
It would be reserved for another 35 -year -old man playing a group behind McILroy, where Cauley came to give himself the best birthday present in his professional life.
Cauley, playing on a major medical exemption in the last 13 months, has received an important career stroke by equaling sixth place to ensure the securing of a PGA Tour card for the rest of 2025.
He needed at least a solo finish to win the Fedex points necessary to keep his card, easily exceeding this brand by staying in the top 10 throughout the final.
Although disappointed, he did not do the best to grab his head after starting a blow on Sunday behind Leader Spaun, taking a final 74, barely reduced the most memorable career performance in Cauley.
“To finish the top 10 in a tournament, this big is an excellent step forward for me, and I will try to rely on this for the rest of the year,” said Cauley.
“Yeah, I have much more confidence, I think, leaving here today than what I have presented myself, which, I think, will help me throughout the year. I am really excited.
Recovery of Golf Hell
After all the calamities of Cauley’s health in the past seven years and wondering if he would compete again on tour, he has capitalized on a lucky break to enter the players.
With an impressive 66 of the third round to put himself in the running, then by remaining in the ranking most of Sunday, he became the most edifying scenario of the tournament.
Growing up in Jacksonville and cherishing at every moment to look at players in person – Dreaming one day do something special during the stadium – its finish of 9 sous and being three shots in the playoffs is a redemption that many wondered.
It’s now official: Cauley, who was 35 years old on Sunday, is back from Golfing Hell.
Although this is not the historic rebound of the legendary Ben Hogan after his almost fatal collision with a bus in 1949, Cauley still deserves a kind of persistence medal.
First of all, he endured a horrible car accident in Dublin, Ohio in 2018, which broke six ribs, fractured his left leg and perforated a lung.
After playing for the next two years, the medical complications of the accident began to settle with its coasts. This required more surgeries, forcing Cauley to get out of the competition for 40 months until January 2024.
When Cauley’s wife Kristi spotted the humidity on her shirt in 2020, Bud noticed that one side of her chest was a hole. He underwent more operations and obtained C-Diff from antibiotics.
“Everything that could be wrong seemed to be wrong,” said Cauley during his first public discussion on this subject to WM Phoenix Open last year. “It just made me go back a little over three years.”
“Most scary in my life”
Cauley has no specific memories of the accident which involved four people on Friday evening of the 2018 commemorative tournament because it was knocked out.
According to most accounts, he had the chance not to be more seriously injured, although damage to some of his parts of the body can hardly be classified as minors.
A year after the accident, after going back to play in the memorial, he said: “During the first month about the first month, the swelling was so bad on my side, I couldn’t even grasp a club, not to mention Swing One. … even just sit or speak or breathe with the lung was quite hard. “”
Cauley described it as “the frightening period of my life”, and it was before the medical follow -up complications that put his golf career in limbo.
Besides Kristi, few people have so much knowledge about what Cauley has experienced as Justin Thomas tour player. He followed Cauley, three times American in Alabama, in Tuscaloosa and the two became rapid friends after Thomas became pro.
When Cauley had his accident, he lived in Jupiter with Thomas, who is still struggling to discuss the test that his boyfriend crossed.
After Thomas finished his round on Sunday, he did not hesing a guest when he questioned the most impressive part of Cauley’s return.
“Stay just positive, have the optimism you are going to play again,” said Thomas. “He definitely had a few moments, I would say, where he said to himself:” Okay, what then? ” What now? He has seen so many different doctors, so many different (physiotherapists), traveled anywhere and everywhere to obtain opinions.
“Dude, it is difficult to stay patient and believe that everything will work at the end. It is such a cool and unique thing about the golf course is, other sports, at his age, his career is over. But he could realist play competitively for five or 10 years, so I’m glad he held it. »»
Cauley had trouble getting momentum
Obtaining his first victory on tour to the players would have been a dream scenario for Cauley, but a bald putter let him play all day.
He missed the putts by interior of 10 feet at n ° 3, 4 and 8. A 34 -foot stewed putt to close his first nine was encouraging, but by the turn, McILroy and Spaun were both shots in front of Cauley.
After a four -hour weather time, Cauley has bogey the 11th hole by five when his approach shot landed in a rear bunker. Although playing its last seven holes in 1 sous, including a birdie at the hole of island n ° 17, the pioneering problems of the first of Cauley were too much to overcome.
However, the advantages of having a salary of $ 843,750 and to go from 128th to 47th of the points of the Fedex Cup should encourage Cauley to continue the Valspar championship on Thursday in Palm Harbor.
In a decade, the sustainable memory of the 2025 players will probably be the result of the McILroy-Spaun qualifying series. But let’s not forget that it is also a potential moment that changes life for Cauley, especially if the confidence he now feels leads him to win his first victory on tour after so much medical trauma.
“He’s such a good player, I think it would be a crime if he doesn’t win at some point in his career,” said Thomas. “He just has as many match. Dude, he has gone through a lot. He had a lot of injuries and just fought a lot of ups and downs and just madness. »»
Cauley, whose best career section occurred in 2012 at the age of 22 with three top 5 ends in 28 days, has never lost confidence in his game. With his global classification about to make a massive jump of n ° 251, maybe staying good health is all that Cauley needs to become a golf force.
“I always believed that I could compete with the best guys in the world, and I should be hoped to win tournaments and play in the teams of the Presidents Cup and the Ryder Cup teams,” said Cauley. “It has always been my dream, and I always think I can do it.”
For the moment, it’s just comforting to see William Carl “Bud” Cauley III be in a Sunday ranking among players.
Since Tout Cauley crossed, he was late for golf gods to deliver something special.
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