Sawgrass a difficult acquired taste to master for McIlroy
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — Rory McIlroy didn’t break par until his fourth time at The Players Championship.
The next step is having a chance come Sunday.
The four-time major champion has learned to love the TPC Sawgrass — “learned to like,” he quickly clarified with a smile — and he has taken small steps toward contention. The Stadium Course has a history of not favoring any one style of play, and the list of winners at the PGA Tour’s premier event illustrates that, going from Greg Norman to Lee Janzen, from Tiger Woods to Craig Perks, from Henrik Stenson to Tim Clark.
“I felt like it handcuffed me,” McIlroy said. “I felt like I was just being stubborn, trying to hit driver where there’s no point in hitting driver. So I’ve learned to take it for what it is — a very positional golf course.”
Attitude is everything in golf, especially on this Pete Dye-designed course created on land that used to be a swamp.
McIlroy said he now looks forward to The Players Championship, even though he has yet to finish closer than four shots of the winner. He is not alone in his struggles.
Jordan Spieth has gone the opposite direction. He nearly won the first time he played and didn’t even make a bogey until his 59th hole. He tied for fourth. And that was the last time he played on the weekend at Sawgrass.
“I just kind of assumed that it would come easy to me,” Spieth said.
Dustin Johnson has never finished better than a tie for 12th. That was last year, and he had to close with a 68 to finish that high. Even more remarkable for the No. 1 player in the world is that he has shot in the 60s just three times in 30 rounds.
It all starts to unfold Thursday, the final time The Players Championship will be held in May after a 12-year run before returning to the pre-Masters date in March.
Tiger Woods has won twice at Sawgrass. He has never missed the cut. But he has been perplexed by the Stadium Course, just like so many others. He has finished out of the top 20 in just over half his appearances, some of those when he was the most dominant player in golf.
“There’s no way of faking it around this golf course,” said Woods. “The golf course negates a lot of different things.”
And while the field has an allstar roster of champions, equally impressive is the list of players who haven’t won. That includes the top five players in the world, all of whom have a mathematical chance to be No. 1 by the end of the week.
First, they have to figure out Sawgrass.
“It’s a golf course that can frustrate you,” McIlroy said. “I think that’s what Pete Dye does so well. He can frustrate you by the design of his golf courses, and you feel like you’re getting bad breaks, and that can get under your skin a little bit. … The mental side of golf is way more important than the physical.”