The second week of April has been synonymous with The Masters forever, it seems, but the second week of May has only hosted The PLAYERS since 2007 and this year will be the last May showing for The PLAYERS, as it reverts back to it’s former March slot in the work up to Augusta National and golf’s major season.
Moving location or season has been a fairly consistent theme in the history of this tournament from it’s inception back in 1974. That inaugural event was held at Atlanta Country Club and it seems only fitting that the premier golfer of his time, Jack Nicklaus, took the title. Jack won The PLAYERS again in ’76 at Inveraray Golf Club, and again in ’78 at Sawgrass Country Club and remains the only three time champion of The PLAYERS.
In ’74 the PGA Tour was officially born. That might be a surprise to some but the current structure of Professional Golf in the U.S., and even the world, is rather young. The Tour, as we know it, came into being when pro tour players (led by Jack and Arnie) split from the PGA of America over disagreements on how to fund tournament purses.
The resulting bifurcation in 1969 established The Tournament Players Division of the PGA within the PGA; in ’74 The PGA Tour severed completely, moved HQ to Ponte Vedra, Fl. and established The PLAYERS Championship.
With new money pouring into the game from TV rights for the chance to showcase Arnie, Jack, Gary Player, Ray Floyd, Johnny Miller, etc. Joe Dey and Deane Beman went about the business of consolidating the PGA Tour as a host of a major tournament, at a property owned and operated by the tour.
The result is The PLAYERS at TPC Sawgrass Stadium Course.
The course and the tournament are one and the same, interchangeable in the minds of golf fans, be they casual or fanatic.
But it wasn’t always that way. For the first eight years in the life of the tournament it was held at various venues around the country with the first championship at TPC Sawgrass Stadium Course held in 1982. Jerry Pate took that crown and took both Pete Dye (course architect) and Deane Beman (Tour Director) for a victory swim in the pond at 18 green!
The PGA Tour/PLAYERS Championship coupling is probably the most innovative and subversive entity in the game of golf.
From one perspective, the Tour is a workers collective, whose purpose is to offer gainful and sustained employment to it’s membership. Tour profit’s aren’t diverted to an ownership class, rather they are funneled into properties and purses that are enjoyed and distributed to it’s members. The PLAYERS is the crown jewel event in a 47 week season that mainly rewards Tour members with an eleven million dollar purse. It’s analogous to NFL players staging their own Super Bowl without any Jerry Jones’s or Bob Kraft’s taking a cut.
In addition to establishing a revolutionary major sports structure, the wise men of the Tour invented the concept of Stadium golf – a golf venue that expanded viewing areas for the galleries and afforded a range of vantage points for fans with slopes and elevated spectator areas throughout the course.
And although TPC Sawgrass Stadium Course wasn’t the first course Pete Dye designed that deserved the sometimes derisive tag of “target golf” it became the standard for a new type of golf architecture, which placed a premium on precise shotmaking as well as precise thinking and proper course management.
The finishing holes holes at TPC Sawgrass are a microcosm of the challenges posed throughout the course in terms of controlling your golf ball. The shortish par five 16th is a great risk/reward hole with eagle possible but bogey or worse in the cards as well. Water protects the green all down the left, with a massive tree blocking access for a misplaced lay-up for those playing away from the water.
Number seventeen is arguably the most famous hole in American golf. Playing around 130 yards for a touring pro should be a piece of cake but it isn’t. This island green puts a player under enormous pressure given it’s position in the round (the 71st hole on Sunday afternoon) and it’s predilection for swirling winds. Just ask Paul Goydos or Ted Tryba how easy it is to play.
And the eighteenth fairway seems just a sliver of green as a player tees it up on a hole that is bounded by water on the left from tee to green.
It’s a hell of a finish but not insurmountable, as Rickie Fowler showed with his 6-under score over the last 6 holes in his 2015 PLAYERS win.
Over the years, The PLAYERS has also begun to challenge the game’s powers that be in asserting itself as a major championship, the 5th Major.
There are arguments on both side of that point but it’s perfectly in the nature of The PLAYERS to upset the status quo. However you think about that issue you should certainly agree that this week is a highlight of the golf world’s calendar.
This is a unique test of golf on an incomparable golf course, a special place and tournament.
It’s The PLAYERS.
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