The Players Championship
TPC Sawgrass will play differently in March
Change of course in move to March 3-
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – It’s a completely different animal.
And not a cuddly one, either. That’s the cautionary take from Jim “Bones” Mackay about the TPC Sawgrass Stadium Course, home to this week’s Players Championship.
With the PGA Tour’s flagship event moving back to March after a 12-year stint in May, an arduous challenge confronts the best players in the world. Mackay, the former longtime caddie for Phil Mickelson and now an on-course reporter for NBC/Golf Channel, started ticking off reasons the course could be an angry beast this time of year.
Significant increase in wind. Different playing surface. Challenging rough. Cooler temperatures. A softer course, which translates to a longer course.
“When I was a kid I used to go up there and watch PGA Tour school late in the year and you watch those guys play in a lot of wind and it was a nightmare,” Mackay said. “Everything’s harder with
15- to 20-mph wind. You’re on edge. You can’t play nearly as effectively from the rough. It’s a completely different animal.”
Few in the field that features all of the top 50 players in the official world golf rankings recognized the Stadium Course. Nearly the entire layout is an eye-popping emerald after a wall-towall rye overseed late last year. The course is lush, as opposed to when it was dry and brown in May.
Drainage improvements with the fairways and the installation of a SubAir system under every green give officials better control, especially with the greens, which could be firm and fast while the course plays long and slow.
Adam Scott is one of two players in the field to win The Players in March. In his first trip around the new Stadium Course on Tuesday, he was struck by how long it is playing and feared how tough it could play. “I hit a 5-iron into the first hole, and I haven’t hit anything but a 9-iron or a wedge in there for 12 years,” the 2004 winner said. “A lot of other holes are like that too. And if it firms up, it’s going to require some really good driving and some really good irons. It’s not brutally difficult, but if the wind blows it’s going to be tough. I think it’s a great test.”
Tiger Woods is the other player in the field to win in March (2001), and he’s the only player to win in March and May (2013). His first taste of the refreshed Stadium Course came Tuesday and, like Scott, he saw a major difference.
On 18, Woods hit 3-wood off the tee and 3-iron into the green. In last year’s last round, he hit 3-iron, 9-iron.
“The golf course plays so much shorter in May than it does in March,” Woods said. “We’re going to have to hit more clubs off the tees, have a little bit longer clubs into the greens, but the difference is the greens are much slower and much more receptive. It’s a very simple formula here: Hit it good. It’s not real complicated.”
Defending Players champion Webb Simpson uncomplicated matters last year when he rolled to a four-shot victory. He saw the altered course for the first time during a media outing last month and liked what he saw.
“Quail Hollow is so similar to this golf course,” Simpson said of the course that hosts the Wells Fargo Championship in Charlotte, North Carolina. Simpson’s home is behind the seventh tee at Quail Hollow. “It’s pretty much the same grass. And I’m on that golf course so much, and they overseed every year, so I feel like I’m really used to it.
“The only thing I’m going to have to change in terms of my game plan is the fairways are going to be wider because they won’t run as much because the course won’t be as firm.”
Or as calm. In May, when the wind did blow, it came from a different direction and players had the wind at their backs on 17 and 18. In March, the predominant wind will come from another direction and it will be into the players’ faces and blowing in from off the left on those two closing holes.
“Pete Dye built TPC Sawgrass for March because of the wind,” said Paul Azinger, the lead analyst for NBC/Golf Channel, who played 15 Players in March and one in May. “Hole No. 17 into the wind, that means players go from a pitch wedge and 9-iron to a 6-, 7- or 8iron, and I’ll tell you, that’s a small target with a 6-iron. And come Sunday, I don’t care who you are, you can’t stop thinking about 17. It is in your head the whole time. It’s the scariest thing to wait on all day.
“And 18 into the wind means driver, 6-iron. That won’t be easy. So hopefully the wind will come a blowing when the bell rings.”
“The golf course plays so much shorter in May than it does in March. We’re going to have to hit more clubs off the tees, have a little bit longer clubs into the greens, but the difference is the greens are much slower and much more receptive. It’s a very simple formula here: Hit it good.”
Tiger Woods