PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. (AP) With apologies to Portugal, the only significant golf this week is on the site of a former swamp.
The Players Championship starts Thursday on the TPC Sawgrass, which offers a $10.5 million purse – even the runner-up gets over $1.1 million – a five-year exemption on the PGA Tour, a three-year exemption to the Masters and British Open and plenty of frustration when something goes wrong.
That’s the nature of Sawgrass, which Pete Dye created on former swamp land a mile from the ocean that features an island green on the par-3 17th, water just about everywhere else and margins of error so thin that it doesn’t take much for a player to take a big number.