RELATED: Final ranking table What’s in Spaun’s bag? His game was in a dark place. He was on his way to lose his PGA TOUR card. He was lost. But then he found something. The 31-year-old Spoon made a small adjustment to last week’s parking lot and won the Valero Texas Open on Sunday, his first in 147 TOUR starts. Spaun started the last lap with a share of the lead in the 10 under. He lost it for a while, opening on Sunday with a double boom. He recovered with birds in the sixth and eighth hole. Hold one shot with a Greenside lob for another ninth. It was at this point that Spoon wondered if his good game could last long enough to let him win. “Good things are happening,” he thought. Spoon went through the back nine with two birds and seven groups. Until then, they could not catch him. Spoon had made four other starts at the Valero Texas Open. It tied in 26th place in 2018 and 49th in 2017. It lost the cuts in 2020 and 2021. He shot 5-under 67 in the first round this year and was on his way. By Sunday, Spaun had vowed to be careful on a hard golf course in the changing winds. “This lesson is a good course to be patient, to hit the net and to hit the greens,” he said. He did everything else well when needed. Spaun finished fifth for the week in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green, 10th in Off-the-Tee, 13th in Around-the-Green and 17th in Putting. The San Diego State Alum also scored 500 FedExCup points, moving up to 10th in the FedExCup rankings. The final lap of 69 put him at 13 down, two shots away from Matt Jones and Matt Kuchar. It also earned him a place in his first Masters tournament. Spoon said he allowed himself to think about Saturday night at the Masters. He entertained the opportunity – and let it go. “There was still so much to be done,” he said. This job was difficult early on. Spaun’s opening double fell to 8 under, with Beau Hossler, Dylan Frittelli and Brandt Snedeker leading the way. These players and many others faced their own problems. Spoon finished with his own. He made six birds and no booger in the rest of the final round. He made every crucial place in the back nine. Spoon became the first player to endure a double boom in the first hole and win the TOUR after Tiger Woods at the 2008 US Open. “I’d rather double the first hole than the last,” Spaun said. Four hours later, he signed an otherwise clean score and waited to see if Hosler would make an albatross in the 72nd hole to tie him up. Hosler did not. On a multi-day day, Spaun held a PGA TOUR trophy for the first time. He knew exactly how much he could handle. “It’s a great feeling to be in the winner’s circle and now it’s like changing the game,” he said. “I do not know. It is just persistence. I’m just trying to move on and stay strong.”