Robert MacIntyre was incredibly close to capturing his third PGA Tour title. He ended the PLAYERS Championship 2026 in fourth place, a mere three strokes away from the top of the leaderboard. But after two consecutive weeks of action, MacIntyre seems to have had enough of the stress, as he has decided to take a step back from the course.

As many sources have confirmed, MacIntyre has withdrawn from the Valspar Championship next week. He will be replaced by Andrew Putnam on the Copperhead Course in the last PGA Tour event in Florida.

He was not the only one to exit from the $9.1 million event. Keith Mitchell has also backed out of the tournament to make way for Doug Ghim.

Interestingly, this is the second year in a row that MacIntyre has chosen to skip the Valspar Championship. He had not played the tournament last year either. But he had never even committed to the tournament in 2025.

That said, the 29-year-old was clearly stressed by the hectic schedule and intense competition in the last couple of weeks. He had already been caught expressing his frustration on the golf course once this season. Competing for the PLAYERS Championship took a lot out of him as he expressed his frustration over the challenges of TPC Sawgrass.

Speaking to John Turnbull from Bunkered, MacIntyre said, “I got the worst lie that I could possibly get all week in a kind of a little valley where the mowers couldn’t get to it, and it was six, seven inches long. It’s a sore one right now.”

While he was talking specifically about the 16th hole lie, the same summary can be used for his performance in the entire tournament.

Let’s see how MacIntyre fared at TPC Sawgrass, which made it too stressful for him to play at the Copperhead Course a week later.

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An overview of Robert MacIntyre’s performance in the PLAYERS Championship

Robert MacIntyre didn’t have the best start to the tournament before the weekend. He was stuck on even par after two rounds, which helped him barely get into the cutline. But the Scottish pro was able to capitalize on the opportunity and go on a wild run on Saturday.

A 7-under 65 helped him jump up the leaderboard and got him close to Ludvig Aberg. MacIntyre managed to score six birdies in the final round as well. That would have been enough for him to tie with Cameron Young and push the PGA Tour flagship event into playoffs. Unfortunately, the three bogeys he scored didn’t help his cause as he only managed a 3-under 69 on Sunday.

As MacIntyre expressed, he was finding tough lies to hit off. It wasn’t as if the 29-year-old wasn’t finding the fairway often. He had an excellent driving accuracy of over 69%. However, judging by the strokes he gained from the approach to the green, he might be finding the worst angles to hit from. He delivered the worst numbers in that stat, which proved to be his downfall in the tournament. Better lies and accurate iron play might have helped him bag the $4.5 million paycheck.