He’s ranked 251st. He was in a car crash. And guess who may win Players?

Bud Cauley wants to dish on … life-altering experiences. Not exactly the lightest subject, but stay with him. There’s a hierarchy, it seems. Car accidents that break six ribs and a leg and collapse a lung? That one’s up there.  

But another bests it. 

“Well, I thought the car accident was life altering,” Cauley said, “and then we had a couple kids and that was really life altering.”

Go ahead and smile. Cauley did. He’s easy-going like that. He’s easy-swinging too. Both traits were behind a seven-birdie, one-eagle 66 on a breezy Saturday at TPC Sawgrass where scores ballooned during the Players Championship’s third round. Sunday, he’ll start in the final grouping. He’s in solo second, one stroke back of leader J.J. Spaun, and he’s also in line for a career payday. Shoot, should he win, the Players’ $4.5 million winner’s check would be around half of what he’s cashed in his 14-year career.    

He’s excited, for sure. Monday, though, Cauley was practicing at the Bear’s Club, Jack Nicklaus’ joint about four hours south of Sawgrass. As first alternate, he wasn’t in. He said he was thinking about diaper duty; son Miles was born in January. But Lee Hodges withdrew, and a call was made. Something’s also clicked. The world’s 251st-ranked pro has played in just four events this year, but Thursday, he opened with a 68, then matched par with a 71 on Friday. Then came Saturday. It was a moment for the 34-year-old who said he grew up near Sawgrass, was a paying customer at countless Players Championships (“I always followed Len Mattiace when he was playing, another Jacksonville guy”) and lived in the area after college. The 66, he said, was his best. It was made even better by the wind. Had he ever seen similar conditions? “Yeah, if it was blowing this hard,” Cauley said, “I probably would have just went home. Probably not.”

Probably not. You don’t hear that much from Cauley. There’s more here. The crash paused a promising career, though if he’s being sincere, it nearly ended it. In June of 2018, while at the Memorial tournament in Dublin, Ohio, he was involved in the wreck; in an Instagram post a few days later, he called it “the scariest day of my life.” In October, Cauley returned, and he played events over the next two years, but complications with his ribs forced a shutdown in September of 2020.  

He wouldn’t return until a Korn Ferry event in January of 2024. A month later, he made his PGA Tour return at the WM Phoenix Open. There, he told his story in detail. There were doctor visits. Complications with a plate in his chest. Questions. 

“It all kind of stems from the car accident I was in in 2018,” Cauley started. “I recovered from that, played for a couple years, and then out of the blue, my side started to hurt again. I broke six ribs in that accident. … The right side all of a sudden started to hurt.

“I went and saw a couple doctors. They thought it was maybe one of the plates I have in my chest. So I went to go have the plates removed, and they couldn’t get them out because the bone had grown on top of the plates. So stitched me back up, said, I think we’ll be OK, we took a little scar tissue out, you’ll be fine, and then like 12 days later, my incision popped open. Just standing in the house, Kristi [his wife] goes, your shirt is kind of wet. Take my shirt off, there’s just a hole in the side of my chest.

“Had to go back to the emergency room, a couple more — I couldn’t really feel it. I’ve kind of had so much happen in that area, I’ve lost a little bit of feeling, which I think worked out in that situation. But decided to go in, had a couple more surgeries that didn’t heal very well, and it was just a whole mess. I had a seroma, got C-diff from all the antibiotics. Everything that could go wrong seemed to go wrong. That just set me back obviously just over three years.”

He said he thought of quitting. He talked with Kristi about other work. She pushed him on. “I have to give her a lot of credit,” Cauley said at the WM event. “She was always very optimistic and helped me get through a lot of tough times.”

But did anyone see Saturday coming? A 66? A Sunday final grouping? Miraculous. Ridiculous. Pick your ‘‘lous.’ But how? How did the world’s 251st-ranked pro, who hadn’t had a spot in the tournament as late as Monday, who once was in a car accident that broke six ribs and a leg and collapsed a lung, advance his golf bag to this point? 

Here, Cauley wants to dish on life-altering experiences. Not exactly the lightest subject, but stay with him.

There’s a hierarchy, it seems.

“It makes you appreciate things a lot more,” he said. “And yeah, as far as even my golf goes, it does put that in perspective. When I do have bad days, it’s not the end of the world. 

“Just come out and try again tomorrow.”