Iconic 17th hole at TPC Sawgrass (Stadium Course)HANS DERYK
The TPC Sawgrass's Stadium course, where the Players Championship will start Thursday, has become one of the most prominent courses anywhere. It's produced many memorable moments, some of which have become iconic. The course that Pete Dye designed generates drama, and in doing so presents an argument for keeping a tournament at the same venue every year.
The Players has been at the Stadium course since 1982, when Jerry Pate won and then jumped in the lake beside the 18th green with then PGA Tour commissioner Deane Beman. Thankfully, winners don't jump in the lake anymore. The Players Championship doesn't need fabricated hype or circus acts.
That's because the course itself is vivid enough. It plays with the golfer's mind while encouraging him to take chances. But the player who misses a shot a little effectively misses it by a lot because of the slopes, run-offs, and water. Opportunity and danger coalesce.
The result is that the course has become fixed in the minds of golf-watchers, as is the case for the Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters. Many examples can make the point.
In 2000, Tiger Woods and Hal Sutton were playing together the final round. Sutton held a one-shot lead on the last hole, where water protects the entire left side of the fairway and green. Sutton had 179 yards to the hole after a perfect drive. He hit a six-iron at the flag and as the ball was in the air he rose to the occasion.
"Be the right club today," Sutton said as he watched the flight. The ball covered the flag. It was the right club. The shot finished eight feet from the hole. Sutton won.
The island green, 137-yard 17th hole gets the most attention because of the havoc, heartbreak, and happiness that it often throws up. Many players feel like throwing up because they have to hit the green or suffer the consequences.
The much-copied and controversial hole forces an all or nothing short iron to the green. Tiger Woods was lucky that his ball stayed on the back of the green during the third round of the 2001 Players Championship rather than toppling over the railroad ties and into the water. Woods faced a double-breaking putt of some 60 feet down to the hole.
The ball rolled and rolled, turned and twisted, and as it approached the hole, NBC's Gary Koch came up with his famous call of "Better than most." The ball dropped and so did the jaws of the thousands of people watching from the stands behind the green. Woods called it a lucky putt but Woods then was much more than lucky. He won that 2001 Players - the only time he's taken the PGA Tour's flagship event.
The exciting course stimulates the players who try to successfully traverse its hazardous terrain. Say what you will about the Glen Abbey Golf Club in Oakville, Ont., it used to produce its own iconic moments when it was the all but permanent home of the Canadian Open from 1977-2000. Golfers still talk about the six-iron that Woods hit from a fairway bunker over the lake on the last hole to win the 2000 Canadian Open. The tournament moves around now, and there's nothing wrong with that for a national championship.
But there's also nothing the matter with, and there's a lot to be said for, keeping a tournament at the same, exceptional, course. The Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass has been providing evidence for this, year after year after year. It's likely that the course will provide more evidence this week. For golfing drama in May, look no further.
RELATED LINK: More blogs from Lorne Rubenstein
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Lorne Rubenstein has written a golf column for The Globe and Mail since 1980. He has played golf since the early 1960s and was the Royal Canadian Golf Association's first curator of its museum and library at the Glen Abbey Golf Club in Oakville, Ontario and the first editor of Score, Canada's Golf Magazine, where he continues to write a column and features. He has won four first-place awards from the Golf Writers Association of America, one National Magazine Award in Canada, and he won the award for the best feature in 2009 from the Golf Journalists Association of Canada. Lorne has written 12 books, including Mike Weir: The Road to the Masters (2003); A Disorderly Compendium of Golf, with Jeff Neuman (2006); This Round's on Me (2009); and the latest Moe & Me: Encounters with Moe Norman, Golf's Mysterious Genius (2012). He is a member of the Ontario Golf Hall of Fame and the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame. Lorne can be reached at rube@sympatico.ca . You can now follow him on Twitter @lornerubenstein