The Players Championship is equal parts spectacle and significance, a tournament rich in history, politics and contradictions, and played on a stadium course created by the great Pete and Alice Dye. But fifth major? Never was, never will be, according to Matt Cleary.
And so, the eyes of golf world turn to the first “big” event on the PGA Tour’s still-wraparound season, The Players Championship – the one owned and operated by the United States PGA Tour, played perennially upon TPC Sawgrass at the Tour’s headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, and which they call “THE PLAYERS Championship” like they’re shouting at you on Twitter.
And, from this perspective, it’s a tournament easy to love, easy to dislike and easy to have no opinion of at all, given we don’t always have to have one. Some things can just be.
Let us count the ways.
Fifth Major? Yeah, nah
The PGA Tour has the most money and thus attracts the majority of the world’s best players. And, thus, its showpiece tournament, The Players Championship, once upon a time was considered the fabled "fifth major". It was never officially. But put it this way – if you had to name one, it was The Players.
The strength of the field of The Players – sorry, THE PLAYERS Championship! Jeez, calm down - was demonstrably better than that in all the majors, at least in terms of Official World Golf Ranking points, the system the global hegemons use to further entrench their global hegemony.
Today, not so much. The machinations of the Great War of Our Time between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf are such that, at any one time, a dozen or more of the world’s best players aren’t turning out in The Players because, well, we won’t dig too vigorously into it, there is only so much space.
TPC Sawgrass on business 😎 pic.twitter.com/QHTkZM1JS4
Bottom line, The Players is not the fifth major, if it ever was, even if Americans are convinced of the exceptionalism of their inward-focused golf tour, and even if they’ve enticed Brooks Koepka back and Pat Reed’s on the way, too, despite no-one asking him.
It is still a magnificent tournament with a world-class field. But, as with so many events outside the majors, it comes with a big asterisk. And until they decide that they need all the world’s best players in the field, and invite them from outside the PGA Tour, we will continue to be sold a pup.
And it would seem unlikely to change given it’s the PGA Tour’s showpiece tournament and a shop closed to anyone not a member of the PGA Tour, no matter how good they are. And, yes, I know it’s their tournament, their rules, they can do what they like. Doesn’t mean you have to like it.
Anyway it can't be the fifth major because there can't be a fifth major, it would stuff up history, degrade Jack's record, and all that.
It shouldn't even replace the worst of the existing majors, the United States PGA Championship as the fourth “major” championship, because that should be replaced by a national golf open championship held on a rotating basis around the world.
The Players is the PGA Tour's baby, and that's okay. But world stretches further east than Ponte Vedra Beach.
Brooks Back
Brooks Koepka is back on Tour, presumably homesick because travelling “the world” no longer appealed. There was also competing in a league which very few fans outside 100,000 party people in Adelaide actually watch. And, as he wandered about in his first tournament back, at Torrey Pines, many fans said “Welcome back”, as the PGA Tour commentators relayed in their relentless bid to pump the Tour’s tyres.
Alas, fellow LIV defector, Patrick Reed, won’t be there, not this year anyway, as he serves, in the nomenclature of the PGA Tour apparatchiks, “his sentence”. Plus, they only wanted Koepka and three other more recent major champions, and you can bet that there were murmurs within the halls of power at Ponte Vedra Beach, Of all the players to come back, we get Paddy freakin’ Reed?
Regardless, Koepka will be back at TPC Sawgrass, where his record since 2015 is CUT, T35, T16, T11, T56, DNP, DNP, CUT. In his first tournament back, he finished T56 in the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines. His four seasons at LIV yielded individual placings of 8th, 3rd, 5th and 31st.
Deane Beman’s Dream
In the early 1970s, with Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player ruling the world, and with the golf industry realising its players could be stars of entertainment on plane with actors and music performers, PGA Tour commissioner Deane Beman decided his Tour needed a tournament of “major” status.
So he just up and created one.
In 1974, Nicklaus won the first PGA Tour Tournament Players Championship at Atlanta Country Club in Georgia, before the tournament switched to Colonial Country Club in Texas, where Nicklaus saluted again in 1976. Inverrary Country Club in Florida hosted the event from 1977–81, before Pete Dye was roped in to create the purpose-built TPC Sawgrass from the Florida Swamplands.
Yet it was Dye’s wife, Alice, who would have the most profound effect on the course.
Alice Dye was very much a collaborator in her husband’s work and was side by side on recon tours of European golf courses. And it is she who is responsible for the iconic island green on the par-3 17th. If there’s a more recognisable signature par-3 in the world, only men in green jackets would be saying “hold my beer”.
Alice won 50 times as an amateur (including the 1978 and 1979 U.S Senior Women’s Amateur championships) and is known as the “First Lady of Golf Architecture” because she was the first woman admitted to the American Society of Golf Course Architects, the society’s first female president, and because it’s a catchy handle.
Her design philosophy was to make courses as playable as possible for golfers of all abilities. They called her “The Patron Saint of the Forward Tee”, again, because it’s catchy.
Anyway, one day during construction and planning of TPC Sawgrass, Pete Dye was fussing and fretting over the position of the 17th green. Beman wanted amphitheatre-style surrounds, with mounding along the last three holes, great for spectators. It was a “stadium” course, after all.
Dye’s original plan had the green sitting to the left of a pond. It was almost out of play, benign, barely adjacent to the green. Looking at the plans, Alice Dye said to her husband: “Why not just make an island green?”
And one of golf’s most famous one-shotters was born.
Aussie, Aussies, Aussies
Of the 43 different winners of The Players in the 52 years since 1974, five Australians - Steve Elkington (1991), Greg Norman (1994), Adam Scott (2004), Jason Day (2016) and Cameron Smith (2020) – have raised The Players Championship Trophy, today a sterling silver and 24k gold vermeil trophy custom-designed by Tiffany and Co, according to The Florida Times-Union.
It is a pity Smith can’t be there – as the next segment laments – and unless “Koala” Karl Vilips or Cameron Davis perform heroics akin to Michelle Payne aboard the Melbourne Cup champion of 2022, Prince of Penzance, and salute at 100-1, a former champion and a recent Tour winner look Australia’s best bet.
Day looks in-form and relaxed. Indeed, he looks borderline at peace, wandering about in his stylish, baggy, cool threads. There appear no flies upon him. He shot 27 birdies in 72 holes to finish T2 and 23-under, four behind Scottie Scheffler in his season-opener at La Quinta. In his second outing he was 7-under and finished T38, 16 shots behind runaway bride Justin Rose at Torrey Pines.
At 38, Day possesses a fine mesh of experience, muscle memory and athleticism in his still-fit frame. As the bookies would say, keep safe.
Min Woo Lee, as his colleagues all agree, has the tools to ascend into the world top-10, which a win in The Players would certainly help facilitate. He is longer than most, hits irons like Iron Byron, and feeds on crowds like a jolly succubus. If he makes some putts, channels old mate Dr Chipinski, well, look out down the stretch on Players Championship Sunday.
Our man Scott, meanwhile, is 45 years old, and, if the golf gods are good, will play his 100th major championship in a row (second only to Nicklaus’ 146) when he tees it up at Royal Birkdale in the 154th Open Championship.
Scott does hold the record for most The Players appearances (25 on the trot) – ahead even of Nicklaus (18). Yet his record in his last five go-rounds at TPC Sawgrass is: T41, CUT, 71, T45, CUT. Prove us wrong, Ad-Man. But, to quote those bookies again, prefer others.
Elsewhere, maybe Scott’s good mate, Ryan Fox, can parlay his maiden PGA Tour win last year into his own ascendancy into the OWGR top echelon and Kiwi immortality alongside the other New Zealander to win The Players (see next segment). Can we claim Fox if he salutes under the flag of New Zealand? Does Russell Crowe eat pavlova?
Vexed Times at Ridgemont High
Cameron Smith won The Players Championship in his halcyon season of 2022, when he also won the Tournament of Champions in Hawaii, the Australian PGA Championship at Royal Queensland and the 150th Open Championship at the Old Course, St Andrews. He shot up to number two behind Scottie Scheffler in the OWGR list and was one of the elite of his kind in world golf.
Then he signed with LIV Golf and had his Former Champion of The Players Championship parking spot taken away by the bitchy creatures at TPC Sawgrass, Ponte Vedra Beach, where the PGA Tour has its headquarters. And there were vexed times at Ridgemont High.
Smith was able to console himself with $100 million United States dollary-doos, immediately won another $US4 million at LIV Chicago, and remains one of Australia’s highest-paid athletes.
Then he missed the cut in five majors on the trot and twice missed the cut at the PGA Championship of Australia at Royal Queensland. And the Accepted Group Think was that LIV Golf had ruined him. Then he all-but won the Australian Open at Royal Melbourne, and that didn’t suit these narratives.
And here we are.
Where is that? We don’t know, not for sure. It’s the future. In 12 rounds of golf on the LIV league thus far he's run T13 in Riyadh, T8 in Adelaide and 48th in Hong Kong in a field of 57, only one of which ended over par.
Regardless, it’s too bad we can’t see Smith’s game tested against the elite in The Players Championship. And it’s too bad, for this and other reasons, The Players is no longer, even nominally, “The Fifth Major”. Invite all the, you know, players and maybe we’ll consider The Players to have the best field in golf. Thankyou. Carry on.
Winner
Scottie Scheffler was the first man to win consecutive Players Championships, in 2023 and 2024, and looks well-placed to equal Jack Nicklaus’ record of three titles in this iteration of
the 52-year-old tournament.
Why? Better question is why not? Only Rory McIlroy, as Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els and Vijay Singh tried to do to 2000s Tiger Woods, seems capable of nipping at the dominance of the languid Texas Longhorn.
Scottie Scheffler was asked what he enjoys about the test TPC Sawgrass provides. His answer was insightful with a funny quip at the end.
"I think this golf course, depending upon the year, provides a variety of different challenges that we don't see typically throughout the… pic.twitter.com/I201KkoEC8
Even his "failures" place him better than 95 percent of the Tour, with three recent starts yielding finishes of T4 (Pebble Beach), T12 (Genesis) and T24 (Arnold Palmer Invitational).
Scheffler’s supremacy of late is Tiger-like. He’s winning for fun. He’ll likely win here again. Again, why not?
His heritage is German-Italian. Maybe ICE will arrest him.
Perks of Success
Great players win The Players. The list of former champions is a cavalcade of the elite.
Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino, Rory McIlroy, Tiger Woods, Scottie Scheffler, Greg Norman, Phil Mickelson, Lanny Wadkins, Ray Floyd, Fred Couples, Nick Price, Sergio Garcia, Henrik Stenson, Adam Scott, Al Geiberger, Jason Day, David Duval, Steve Elkington, Sandy Lyle, Cameron Smith, Justin Thomas, Hal Sutton, Davis Love III and Martin Kaymer all won major championships and The Players.
Even Players champions without a gland slam title have serious chops. Matt Kuchar, K.J Choi, Tim Clark, Rickie Fowler, Mark McCumber, Jodie Mudd, Mark Hayes, Stephen Ames, Fred Funk, Jerry Pate, Calvin Peete and John Mahaffey all won multiple times on the PGA Tour and around the world.
And then, with the greatest respect to Craig Perks, there is Craig Perks; the Kiwi who won The Players Championship of 2002 after a final three holes that defending champion Tiger Woods described as “unbelievable”.
Woods’ summary was apt. Perks had two pars in his last 14 holes – one of them a chip-in on 18. He putted once in his last three holes. There was a lot going on.
After beginning the last round one shot behind playing partner, Carl Paulson, Perks - the winner of four titles on the Hooters Tour and world No.203 - promptly bogied the first hole.
There followed birdie on five, bogey on six, birdie on seven, bogey on eight, bogey on nine for an outward one-over 37.
His run home was no less enigmatic: birdie 11, bogey 12, birdie 13, bogey 14.
When he bogied 15, he was five-under and equal with a panting pack of players including Paulson, Rocco Mediate and Sergio Garcia. More importantly, he was two shots behind 2006 champion Stephen Ames, who was on a heater on the way to 67.
Then it got funky.
Perks nearly dunked his second shot on the par-5 16th before chipping in for eagle-three.
He hit a short iron to the middle of the island on 17 before stroking in a beautiful, downhill, twice-breaking 25-foot birdie putt.
He chopped it about on the 18th before finding himself greenside again, in the fluffy rough. When he chipped in, again, it saved his par. He would write down a score of 72 and beat Ames by two.
At the presentation dais, Woods, who finished seven behind, smiled and said: “You are unbelievable.”
Perks could only agree - he couldn’t believe it either. “I did not expect to win The Players,” he said.
It would be Perks’ only win on the PGA Tour. He would compete in all four major championships that year, and eight all told, with six missed cuts and a best finish of T29 in the 2002 PGA Championship.
In his Players title defence in 2003, Perks finished T17 (behind Davis Love III). After missing the cut in the next four Players, with his “game in a shambles” and not wanting to be one of those guys who keeps banging their head against a wall in the hope that it will hurt less, Perks retired in 2007.
He took to commentary, as Ian Baker-Finch had, and often returned to his happy hunting ground at TPC Sawgrass, where he has been a popular member of the tournament’s commentary team.
But people still can’t believe he won.
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