Rife with division, the modern-day world of professional golf is currently diminished wherever one cares to look. Certainly, at the top level, no tournament on whatever tour you happen to mention is able to command a field quite as stellar as it could and would have been were things as they once were. Sadly, nothing is quite what it was. 

But nowhere is that fact going to be more apparent than this week. 

While the Players Championship remains the biggest tournament on the biggest tour, the coming of the LIV Golf League has inevitably reduced the stature of the so-called “fifth major.” How could it be otherwise? As the four most important events in the game have made their collective (sort-of) peace with the Saudi-backed “three-quarter” circuit, their fields will – at least in the short-term – remain almost completely unaffected by the dollar-laden exodus to the Middle East. 

Not so at the Players.

Not one LIV player will be able to tee-up at Sawgrass this week, not even the defending champion, Cam Smith. So, logic dictates that the gap between the constituent parts of golf’s Grand Slam – numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4 in terms of prestige, history and just about any other category you care to mention – and number 5 is larger than it was even 12 months ago. There is then, only one conclusion. In terms of stature, the 2023 Players Championship cannot compare with, say, the 2022 version in terms of quality. 

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Which is not to say that the coming days are incapable of providing excitement. The climax to last week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill offered proof enough of the PGA Tour’s continuing ability to entertain. And given that the so-called “elite” events invented by either PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan or a cabal of elite players led by Rory McIlroy are all but guaranteed to be attended by anyone and everyone who is eligible, the likelihood is that Kurt Kitayama’s memorable victory will not be the last to stick long in the memory. 

But even a similarly happy scenario will be less impactful this week. As the fifth biggest event in the game, the Players every year boasted a field that was at least comparable – and many times superior – to (especially) the Masters, the U.S PGA, the U.S Open and The Open Championship. And this year will be no different. Except that the likes of Smith, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Patrick Reed, Bryson DeChambeau, Sergio Garcia, Ian Poulter, Lee Westwood, Henrik Stenson, Paul Casey, Abraham Ancer and Joaquin Niemann – to name but a few of the more notable absentees – will all be hitting balls elsewhere. 

Again, this Players is going to be a five-handicapper when compared with the “scratch” events of the past. Once an open comp that drew a mighty response from all around the globe, it is now the equivalent of a monthly medal in which only club members can play. 

Don’t worry too much though. As is invariably the case when attention shifts away from the golf itself in the run-up to even the biggest events, the greatest game of all will eventually make us all forget the bad stuff. And, like it or not, the TPC Sawgrass course does tend to serve up stirring finishes over closing holes that, festooned with water (one of golf’s more boring hazards, at least in the minds of snobs like your correspondent), are capable of producing a large variety of numbers. 

TPC Sawgrass' "island" green on the penultimate hole is the place every casual fan wants to be. PHOTO: Getty Images.

That low-brow approach, however, has never been to the credit of an event purporting to be the next-best thing after the majors. But it is what it is, as another who will not be present this week, Tiger Woods, is fond of uttering in moments when he is stuck for something coherent to say. 

So it is that, at first and second and third glance, the next few days will all look pretty much as they have at every other Players Championship. 

The long semi-circular range will still be guarded by volunteers emboldened and (often obnoxiously) pleased to be armed with unfamiliar and surely unprecedented authority. 

The gaudy tastelessness of the massive clubhouse – an architectural monstrosity reminiscent of the sort of gothic mansion Dracula liked to call home – will continue to produce the shudders it typically induces in first-time observers. 

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And the supposedly iconic island (it’s not) green that is TPC Sawgrass’s penultimate target will still be the place every casual fan clearly wants to be. That hole, folks, is golf for the unsophisticated. Gleefully obsessed with the (hopefully negative) result of every tee-shot, the generally artless gallery (think of Formula One fans who yearn for multi-car crashes on a hairpin bend) is blind to the fact that every player is condemned to hitting exactly the same shot – time after tedious time. There is no thinking involved, no shaping of shots, no imagination required. This is nothing more than a financially-motivated product thinly-disguised as competition, one that surely does a championship of this supposed stature no favours.

And this year, that inherent guilelessness is further depleted by external politics, which is where we came in.