Rory and drama prevail at the Players Championship
Each week, we ask our panel of writers, PGA members and golf industry experts to weigh in with their views on the hot topics of the day.
The Players Championship featured a bit of everything last week, from a tightly packed leaderboard to a Monday playoff, high winds and a weather delay, and one of the biggest two-day turnarounds in tournament history – Justin Thomas 78-62 in the first two rounds. In the end it was Rory McIlroy winning his second Players title over J.J. Spaun. What was your biggest takeaway from the tournament?
Jim Deeks, Fairways Magazine (@jimdeeks): My biggest takeaway was the number of previously unknown or little-known players who dominated the leaderboard and finished in the top 20… from Spaun (little-known) to Cauley, Smalley, Walker, Thompson, Rai, McCarthy, Ryder, Highsmith, McCarty, McGreevy, and Jaeger. Also, the bigger names who faltered.
Michael Schurman, Master Professional / Hall of Fame Member, PGA of Canada: My biggest takeaway is the magnificence of the course design. Over the years, the subtle changes like the heavy rough on the left of #4, how penal the mounds around #9 green and #18 green the bunkers on the right of #14 have become. The entire event is major worthy except for the field. All of the best players aren’t playing.
TJ Rule, Golf Away Tours (@GolfAwayTJ): My biggest takeaway is that it really is a good course on which to watch a big tournament. I have never been a huge TPC Sawgrass fan, but it’s growing on me. It challenges the top players but provides some scoring opportunities and does have that exciting finish that always provides drama. I felt for Spaun as he flushed that tee shot on 17 and was probably thinking it was going to be tight, and it ended his tournament as it cut right through the wind. Overall, it was a great finish, and it was good to see Rory win a big one leading up to the biggest one that’s missing from his resume.
Hal Quinn, Freelance Writer, Vancouver: The Players reminded me that watching golf on TV can be very engaging and entertaining. Since the birth of LIV, it has been hard to stomach with all the mysteries surrounding the sources of tips and purses, but the drama at Ponte Vedra was compelling and not political. Surprisingly, the couple of hundred grand to J.J. seemed about right. Alice Dye isn’t mentioned anymore as an influential, almost co- designer of Dye-abolical Sawgrass, but she was the one who solved the problem of getting to 18 from 16 by suggesting dredging the pond and creating the now-iconic island green at 17. Coming off the 18th at his Muirfield, Nicklaus asked me about my round. “The course won,” I said. “It usually does,” he replied. The course, and life-long fans of golf, won this time.
Peter Mumford, Fairways Magazine (@FairwaysMag): This was one of the best tournaments in some time. It had a worthy golf course and eventually a marquee winner. But it also had a cut, a large field and lots of no-names at the top of the leaderboard. The Tour keeps pushing the idea of limited fields of best against best but that doesn’t guarantee drama, excitement or compelling stories like Bud Cauley, JJ Spaun or Danny Walker. Would the drama have been any better if Scottie Scheffler were in the playoff? Maybe that would have satisfied the sponsors and occasional fans who are drawn to celebrities. But Scheffler didn’t play well enough to be there. Spaun did and that’s a story worth telling.
TPC Sawgrass is a tough test, especially the last three holes, which often lead to big swings on the leaderboard. The PGA Tour uses those holes for a three-hole playoff as opposed to the sudden death format they use for all other non-major PGA Tour events. Is that the best way to decide this tournament?
Deeks: Yes, I think it’s appropriate and adds a certain prestige to the event. Frankly, I don’t know why the powers-that-be just don’t declare The Players as the OFFICIAL fifth major. I’d rather watch it than the PGA.
Schurman: A three-hole play-off and then sudden death give the fans, the players, the TV, etc., a chance for a fair result. My only change would be to alternate the ‘honour’ after each hole. 16, 17, and 18 were born for an exciting finish and a great play-off.
Rule: I believe so, especially when they have to come back the next day for the playoff. You could warm up in the morning for 90 minutes only to hit one bad shot off the tee and be done. So having the 3 holes gives a chance to make up for a mistake out of the gate. I like the format.
Quinn: Without question, deciding a 72-hole significant tourney in “sudden Victory” as the late Curt Gowdy insisted on calling it, is ridiculous. It has everything to do with TV contracts (60 Minutes at 7pm EST) and nothing to do with the game its own self. The four-hole Open format is better, but three is at a bare minimum better than one.
Mumford: The players start to worry about the 17th before they set foot on the property, so a sudden death playoff on the island green would make for exciting TV. However, the three-hole format works better and is appropriate given the importance of the Players Championship.
During his State of the Tour message last Tuesday, Commissioner Jay Monahan sounded like the Tour was finally getting serious about pace of play, announcing they would soon be publishing playing times for all players in the field, experimenting with rangefinders and testing stroke play penalties for slowpokes on the Korn Ferry Tour. What’s your take on these new initiatives?
Deeks: All good. It’s about time they got serious about pace. Now maybe they should do something about calling in officials for rulings… which slows down the entire field behind. And while we’re at it, how about letting the players wear shorts?
Schurman: I guess this message is being delivered by ‘snail’ mail. I thought ‘snail’ mail was a joking, over-exaggeration of the slow pace of land delivery mail. The first complaints about slow play started with guys like Cary Middlecoff and then Jack Nicklaus in the 50s and 60s. To think that JM is receiving those letters now, some 70 years later, shows that there is a problem with the US Postal Service. If he acts quickly and sends them by return mail, they should be received by 2090.
Rule: It’s a start. I hope that naming names will hit hard with the guys, not wanting to be shamed. However, I fear some just won’t give a you-know-what and will take their sweet time until they see it hitting their pocketbooks. I hope penalizing Korn Ferry players is the first step to bringing that procedure to the big leagues.
Quinn: It’s like the AI umpires in baseball, test it in the minors first. Good PR plan — at least there’s suddenly pseudo-action after decades of complaints. Thanks to the LPGA Tour superstars for being so vocal that even the PGA Tour mandarins heard them. In my summer role as a starter at a BC course, I usually get a subtle shot in to morning golfers telling them it gets dark about 8. Problem in public golf is that once the VISA is hit for more than $100 (that low if you’re lucky) the average player (handicap +16 and higher) is in no mood to rush after buying an $9 beer at the turn. But good that the Tour is slowly moving towards speeding it up a bit.
Mumford: Phrases like “dragged kicking and screaming” come to mind when I think about the Tour’s tortuous response to slow play. Is there a penalty for slow administration? Do they really need to test these things in the minors? Public shaming of the slowpokes is a good start, but penalty strokes and disqualifications are really just a stronger response to the fines they’ve been assessing for years. They have a long history to guide them. More testing is just further delay.
