Martin Kaymer Wins THE PLAYERS at the 17th

by Jeff Skinner

The PGA Tour’s showcase event rarely fails to deliver an exciting finish. THE PLAYERS Championship was the brainchild of former commissioner Deane Beman. Beman was discouraged by the fact that the best players in the game, the players that play the PGA Tour each week didn’t have ownership of any of the biggest events in golf.  All that has changed now.

The Masters is run by Augusta National. The USGA owns the U.S. Open and their counterparts across the pond own the Open Championship. The PGA Championship is owned by the PGA of America which, to the uninformed, isn’t the PGA Tour.

So Beman started The PLAYERS and had Pete Dye carve a “stadium style” course out of a snake infested alligator swamp near Jacksonville, Florida. I am sure plenty thought he was out of his mind and plenty of players hated the TPC Sawgrass Stadium Course when it first opened. But through the years THE PLAYERS has matured into a substantial and exciting tournament.

Much or all of it really has to do with the course. We see the same course each year and with such a dastardly, evil, penultimate hole it has become legend.

The 17th at Sawgrass is the most recognized hole in golf and the most exciting. We all know that on Sunday the tournament can be won or lost on seventeen. And so do the players.

The seventeenth can be cruel: just ask Sergio Garcia, Sean O’Hair or Paul Goydos who all lost chances at a PLAYERS Championship with wet shots at seventeen.

The Tour likes the fact that all can be won or lost in a single stroke. It is what sets this tournament apart: the seventeenth generates the most excitement of any hole in the game.
As many times as THE PLAYERS is lost on seventeen it has been won. And that was the case today as Martin Kaymer’s brilliant shot salvaged his PLAYERS win.

Only it wasn’t the tee ball that decided the outcome as it has been so many times in the past. Although Kaymer tried like hell to have his tee ball cost him his victory. A short wedge, barely landed on the island, bounced a yard from the bunker, landed in the middle of the green and proceeded to spin back toward the water at alarming speed. It was only the generous rough that rings the green that kept it dry.

Normally that deep rough frustrates players but in this case it saved Kaymer. But he still tried to let seventeen have its way with him when he hit a weak chip that left him a long, downhill, left to right swinger that had little chance of being holed.

But this my fine, Footjoyed friends is why they play the game. Kaymer, with the weight of the meltdown on his shoulders, steps up and drains the putt and it was fist pumps all around. His par at eighteen gave him a one stroke win over Jim Furyk and the PGA Tour has its way. The seventeenth decides the tournament once again.