It would be truly agonising to watch any PGA Tour player finish second on 13 occasions in 2026, knowing what would be written and said about them and their inability to get across the line.
Tommy Fleetwood finished second on the PGA Tour on six occasions before getting the job done at the Tour Championship earlier this year.
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Fleetwood came under all sorts of scrutiny after having golden opportunities to secure his maiden victory at the Travelers Championship and the FedEx St. Jude Championship – where he ultimately finished third. So it is hard to overstate just how significant his win at East Lake could prove to be in his career.
Incredibly, it is 80 years since one player ended up finishing second on 13 occasions in one season.
The golfer who finished second 13 times in one year on the PGA Tour
The 1945 campaign will largely be remembered for Byron Nelson winning 18 times in total, including 11 events in a row at one stage.
Remarkably, the same player finished as runner-up to Nelson on seven occasions.
Harold ‘Jug’ McSpaden won 28 times as a professional, with 17 victories coming on the PGA Tour. In fact, he secured six wins in total in 1944.
But McSpaden was clearly the player who suffered the most from Nelson’s brilliance the following year. The likes of Ben Hogan and Sam Snead also beat McSpaden to titles that season.
He would, however, win the Miami International Four-Ball with Nelson for his only win of 1945.
What makes McSpaden’s year all the more heartbreaking was that he would never actually win a professional event again.
His final appearance in a major came at the 1949 Masters where he withdrew. McSpaden never played in The Open Championship, but did finish second at the PGA Championship in 1937.
Even that result came about in sickening fashion.
How Jug McSpaden collapsed to lose the 1937 PGA Championship
McSpaden led two up with three holes to play in the final with Denny Shute. However, he played the 34th and 35th holes in three over par to find himself all square heading down the last.
McSpaden would miss a four-foot putt to win the title. And he was then beaten on the first playoff hole to hand Shute his second consecutive PGA Championship crown.
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Despite that, McSpaden’s career record is hugely impressive. As well as his 17 wins, he registered 95 top five finishes in 215 PGA Tour starts.
He was inside the top 10 on 138 occasions – well over half of his appearances.
But the number that stands out is, of course, the 30 second place finishes across his career.
As he jokingly told Nelson in 1995: “If you wouldn’t have been born, I would have been known as a pretty good player.”
In fact, if Nelson had brought his premature retirement even further forward by a couple of years, McSpaden would have surely gone on to cement himself as one of the all time greats.
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