Bud Cauley’s showing at The Players an impactful lesson in perseverance

• Bud Cauley, a former Jacksonville resident, overcame a series of health challenges to tie for sixth place at The Players Championship.
• Cauley’s top-10 finish secured his PGA Tour card for the remainder of 2025 after playing on a major medical exemption for 13 months.
• Cauley’s performance at The Players marks a significant comeback after a car accident in 2018 and subsequent medical complications sidelined him for several years.

PONTE VEDRA BEACH — Until Bud Cauley got a phone call last week at the Bear’s Club in Jupiter to inform him Lee Hodges’ withdrawal from The Players Championship put him in the 144-man field, his weekend game plan was “changing diapers” of 6-week-old son Miles and “not sleeping very well.” 

Instead of changing his son’s underpants, the former Jacksonville resident may have just altered the path of his once lost golf career. 

While the most buzz Sunday from the gallery at the Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass was reserved for global star Rory McIlroy ending in a tie with unheralded J.J. Spaun, forcing a three-hole aggregate playoff on Monday, it was hardly the Players’ most heartwarming story. 

That would be reserved for another 35-year-old playing one group behind McIlroy, where Cauley came through to give himself the best birthday present of his professional life. 

More: With a heavy heart, Matt Kuchar plays The Players without big supporter, father Peter

Cauley, playing on a major medical exemption for the past 13 months, received a significant career boost by tying for sixth place to ensure securing a PGA Tour card for the remainder of 2025. 

He needed at least a solo 18th-place finish to earn the necessary FedEx points to retain his card, easily surpassing that mark by staying in the top 10 over the entire final round. 

Though disappointed he didn’t make a better push to seize the lead after starting out Sunday just one stroke behind leader Spaun, shooting a final-round 74 hardly diminished Cauley’s most memorable career performance. 

“To finish top 10 in a tournament this big is a great step forward for me, and I’ll try to build on that for the rest of the year,” said Cauley. 

“Yeah, I have a lot more confidence, I think, leaving here today than what I showed up with, which I think will help me throughout the year. I’m really excited.”

Recovery from golf hell  

After all of Cauley’s health calamities the past seven years and questions about whether he would compete on Tour again, he capitalized on a lucky break to get into the Players. 

With an impressive third-round 66 to get into contention, then staying on the leaderboard most of Sunday, he became the tournament’s most uplifting storyline. 

Growing up in Jacksonville and treasuring every moment of watching the Players in person — dreaming of someday doing something special at the Stadium Course — his 9-under-par finish and being three shots out of a playoff is a redemption that many wondered would ever happen. 

It’s now official: Cauley, who turned 35 on Sunday, is back from golfing hell. 

While it’s not the historic rebound of the legendary Ben Hogan after his near-fatal collision with a bus in 1949, Cauley still deserves some kind of perseverance medal.   

First, he endured a horrific car accident in Dublin, Ohio in 2018, which broke six ribs, fractured his left leg and punctured a lung. 

After playing for the next two years, medical complications from the accident began setting in with his ribs. That required more surgeries, forcing Cauley out of competition for 40 months through January, 2024. 

When Cauley’s wife, Kristi, spotted wetness on his shirt in 2020, Bud noticed one side of his chest had a hole in it. He underwent more operations and got C-diff from antibiotics. 

“Everything that could go wrong seemed to go wrong,” Cauley said in his first public discussion about it at last year’s WM Phoenix Open. “That just set me back obviously just over three years.”

‘Scariest time of my life’ 

Cauley has no specific memories of the crash that involved four people on a Friday night of the 2018 Memorial tournament because he was knocked unconscious. 

By most accounts, he was fortunate to not be more seriously injured, though the damage to some of his body parts can hardly be classified as minor. 

One year after the accident, after returning to play in the Memorial, he said: “For the first month or so, the swelling was so bad on my side, I couldn’t even grip a club, let alone swing one. … even just sitting around or talking or breathing with the lung was pretty tough.” 

Cauley described it as “the scariest time of my life,” and that was before the follow-up medical complications that put his golf career in limbo. 

Besides Kristi, few people have as much insight into what Cauley went through as Tour player Justin Thomas. He followed Cauley, a three-time All-American at Alabama, to Tuscaloosa and the two became fast friends after Thomas turned pro. 

When Cauley had his accident, he was living in Jupiter with Thomas, who still struggles discussing the ordeal his buddy went through. 

After Thomas finished his Sunday round, he didn’t hestiate when asked about the most impressive part of Cauley’s comeback. 

“Just staying positive, having optimism that you’re going to play again,” Thomas said. “He definitely had some moments, I would say, where he was like, ‘Okay, what next? What now?’ He saw so many different doctors, so many different [physical therapists], traveled anywhere and everywhere to get opinions. 

“Man, it’s hard to stay patient and believe that it’s all going to work out in the end. That’s such a cool, unique thing about golf is, other sports, at his age, his career’s done. But he realistically could play competitively for another five or 10 years, so I’m glad he stuck it out.” 

Cauley struggled to build momentum 

Getting his first Tour victory at The Players would have been a dream scenario for Cauley, but a balky putter left him playing uphill all day. 

He missed par putts from inside 10 feet at Nos. 3, 4 and 8. A 34-foot birdie putt to close out his front nine was encouraging, but at the turn, McIlroy and Spaun were both two shots ahead of Cauley. 

Following a four-hour weather delay, Cauley bogeyed the par-five 11th hole when his approach shot landed in a back bunker. Though playing his last seven holes in 1-under, including a birdie at the No. 17 island hole, Cauley’s early putting woes were too much to overcome. 

Still, the benefits of having an $843,750 payday and moving from 128th to 47th in FedEx Cup points should give Cauley plenty of incentive to keep it going at the Valspar Championship on Thursday in Palm Harbor. 

A decade from now, the lasting memory from the 2025 Players will likely be the outcome of the McIlroy-Spaun playoff. But let’s not forget this is also a potential life-changing moment for Cauley, especially if the confidence he now feels leads to him getting his first Tour win 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’s just got that much game. Man, he’s been through a lot. He’s had a lot of injuries and just battled a lot of ups and downs and just craziness.” 

Cauley, whose best career stretch came in 2012 at age 22 with three top-5 Tour finishes in a 28-day span, has never lost faith in his game. With his world ranking about to take a massive jump from No. 251, maybe staying healthy enough is all Cauley needs to become a golf force. 

“I’ve always believed that I can compete with the best guys in the world, and I should be hopefully winning tournaments and playing on Presidents Cup teams and Ryder Cup teams,” said Cauley. “That’s always been my dream, and I still believe I can do that.” 

For now, it’s just heartwarming to see William Carl “Bud” Cauley III being on a Sunday leaderboard at the Players. 

Given all Cauley has been through, he was overdue for the golfing gods to deliver something special. 

Gfrenette@jacksonville.com: (904) 359-4540; Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, at @genefrenette