Written by Stephen Moloney (www.twitter.com/TheCheeky9)
Remember last week when I described the Honda Classic as having been “attritional”? Wasn’t that adorable? Because after the way Bay Hill played over the weekend just gone for the Arnold Palmer Invitational, it made what happened two and bit hours down the road at PGA National look like a regular PGA Tour event birdie-fest. I mean, the winning score being lower than -4? Multiple people shooting under par rounds on Sunday? The entire top 10 finishing in red figures for the tournament? And here was me thinking ‘The Bear Trap’ was meant to be difficult – perhaps they should consider a name change to ‘The Paddington Bear Trap’ instead?
Like, between the thickness of the rough, the firmness of the fairways, the speed of the greens, the wind, that one dude who thought screaming out, “RELEASE THE LEISH!”, was an actual cool thing for him to do on national television, everything about Bay Hill made this year’s Arnold Palmer Invitational feel as though you were watching a Major unfold before your eyes – and a particularly brutal one at that.
Yet it’s for that very reason which makes Tyrrell Hatton’s accomplishment in being the one Sam Saunders (Arnold Palmer’s grandson) was left slipping that red cardigan onto come Sunday evening all the more impressive. He beat an incredibly tough course, an incredibly strong field and when moments arose during his round that could have seen it easily unravel (the double bogey at 11, finding trouble at 13 & 16) he didn’t panic nor lose the run of himself. And whilst the cardigan, bumper paycheque and unlocked privileges will be the obvious perks to look at after this win, once the hangover from the celebrations finally abates in three to four weeks time, Tyrrell might just discover that, when he’s staring down another brute of a golf course at this year’s Majors, the cache of experience and memories he now has after last weekend’s performance might just be the most valuable by-product of his duel with Bay Hill.
Speaking of Majors, however, though this week’s Players Championship most certainly isn’t one, the mountain of money which gets put up for grabs annually in Ponte Vedra Beach (along with, now, an immeasurably nicer trophy than there was before) always attracts a Major-calibre field of those players currently at the very top of the food chain. And whilst those ‘big game’ tend to garner most of the attention whenever the tour rolls into the confines of Pete Dye’s most famous creation, the host of outliers who round out the field, as history has shown, are more than capable of creeping up to the watering hole that is the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass and sneaking a win right out from underneath the noses of the lions.
So, without any further ado, let’s go on safari, shall we?
Field Report
Who’s rocking up to the Players this week?
Everyone.
It’s the Players.
Like, if you can play in this tournament? Then chances are you’re throwing the clubs and shoes into the boot of the car and heading to Ponte Vedra Beach because … well, who wouldn’t like a chance to snag a nice share of $15 million? With the winner alone getting $2.7 million of that? I mean, I think that would very much qualify as a scenario where the juice would be worth the potential squeeze.
And given forty-seven of the current fifty best players in the world will be teeing it up come Thursday on the Stadium Course (Shugo Imahira, Tiger Woods & Lee Westwood being the trio of absentees) along with a mixture of standout young talent (Viktor Hovland, Matthew Wolff and Cameron Champ), seasoned veterans (Phil Mickelson, Jim Furyk & Retief Goosen) and those aforementioned outliers (Patrick Rodgers, Adam Schenk & Mark Hubbard to name a few), I think they’d all agree too.
The Yardage Book
(i) Below you will find the scorecard for the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass. For each hole I’ve listed its par; what shape best suits it off the tee; and its scoring average.
| Front 9 | TPC Sawgrass (Stadium Course) | Back 9 |
| #1: Par 4 – Fade – 3.954 | Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida | #10: Par 4 – Draw – 4.046 |
| #2: Par 5 – Draw – 4.604 | 7,189 yards | #11: Par 5 – Either – 4.664 |
| #3: Par 3 – Either – 3.080 | #12: Par 4 – Draw – 3.533 | |
| #4: Par 4 – Fade – 4.087 | #13: Par 3 – Either – 3.055 | |
| #5: Par 4 – Fade – 4.236 | #14: Par 4 – Draw – 4.208 | |
| #6: Par 4 – Either – 4.043 | #15: Par 4 – Fade – 4.025 | |
| #7: Par 4 – Fade – 4.144 | #16: Par 5 – Draw – 4.554 | |
| #8: Par 3 – Either – 3.224 | #17: Par 3 – Either – 3.002 | |
| #9: Par 5 – Either – 4.838 | #18: Par 4 – Draw – 4.215 | |
| Out: 36 | Par 72 | In: 36 |
(ii) In the last fortnight, the first two legs of this year’s ‘Florida Swing’ have seen us bear witness to some of the toughest conditions and course setups seen anywhere this season, both in the States and over on this side of the Atlantic on the European Tour. After two such demanding tests of golf back-to-back, however, you’d have to imagine that for the Players we’ll be seeing a somewhat easier examination laid out for the world’s best golfers. I mean, after all, this is the PGA Tour’s flagship event we’re talking about; their big showcase to the world that reminds everyone why their tour is where all the money is and, as a result, why those golfers who are the elite of the elite want to play on it. So, bearing that in mind, the powers that be in the PGA Tour and the tournament directors aren’t going to be wanting a -6 or -4 total being the winning score come Sunday. They won’t want only one person finishing under par for a day’s play. And they won’t want people going out grinding for pars for four hours. They’ll want people making birdies, making eagles and posting low scores.
Now, don’t get me wrong, the Players, of course, will still be a stern test – Sawgrass always is – but when it’ll come to Sunday afternoon and the leaders are on the back 9, I think the roars we’ll hear echoing around the course won’t be because someone made “a good bogey”. No. This will be a week for making birdies – and lots of ‘em.
(iii) At this stage the weather for this week is looking like it’s going to be as close to perfect for playing golf as you could get. The temperatures won’t dip below 20℃ (and could climb as high as 26℃ on Friday) and though there’ll be a bit of breeze it shouldn’t be anything too problematic, with morning tee times seeing pretty benign conditions all four days (9km/h & maximum gusts of 17km/h) and afternoon tee times not seeing all that much wilder either (generally 15km/h & gusts no stronger than 20km/h). Ideal.
(iv) If there was one common thread that linked PGA National and Bay Hill, it was the fact they both forced you into playing certain types of shots, asked multiple different questions of your golf game and if you were found wanting in a certain department? You got punished – it’s what all good golf courses do. And when you look at the Stadium Course at Sawgrass this week, it doesn’t buck that trend. You have to be able to hit a draw. You have to be able to hit a fade. You have to have a short game. You have to be able to putt. And, as is demonstrated quite beautifully in the 17th, you have to be able to do the basics in the most extraordinary of circumstances.
(v) Below you will find the Top 10 and ties for the last three years at the Players. I stopped at 2017 as the course underwent changes following the 2016 tournament.
| 2019 | 2018 | 2017 |
| Rory McIlroy -16 | Webb Simpson -18 | Si Woo Kim -10 |
| Jim Furyk -15 | Charl Schwartzel -14 | Louis Oosthuizen -7 |
| Eddie Pepperell -14 | Xander Schauffele -14 | Ian Poulter -7 |
| Jhonattan Vegas -14 | Jimmy Walker -14 | Rafa Cabrera Bello -6 |
| Tommy Fleetwood -13 | Jason Day -13 | Kyle Stanley -6 |
| Dustin Johnson -13 | Jason Dufner -13 | Lucas Glover -5 |
| Brandt Snedeker -13 | Keegan Bradley -12 | Francesco Molinari -5 |
| Jason Day -12 | Tommy Fleetwood -12 | Adam Scott -5 |
| Brian Harman -12 | Danny Lee -12 | Brendan Steele -5 |
| Hideki Matsuyama -12 | Harold Varner III -12 | Alex Noren -4 |
| Justin Rose -12 |
The Oracles’ Fourball
Do you know what “Scis hoc posset occidere te, quod sic?” means? Well, as I’ve mentioned previously in these previews, my Latin is still something of a ‘work in progress’, so it wasn’t until I returned home from the Oracles’ cave late on Monday night and typed it into ‘Google Translate’ that I learnt it actually means, “You are aware this could kill you, yes?” and not – as I had thought it meant before happily guzzling down the extra strong broth I’d asked them to prepare for me – “You are aware this could make you quite dizzy, yes?”.
And why did I ask for, what I now know was, a dangerously strong broth?
Because trying to predict who might do well at the Players or even win it is an incredibly difficult task as, year on year, it throws up a host of unpredictable results and, as a result, doesn’t necessarily lend itself to creating patterns or trends that you can identify as a means of coming up with a prediction … hence enter drinking a close-to-poisonous broth concocted by a group of centuries-old Oracles who reside in a secluded cave in the Irish countryside and communicate exclusively in Latin.
Justin Thomas: It’s a well established fact that for the age that he is, Justin Thomas has an incredibly impressive résumé. He has 12 PGA Tour wins; 2 European Tour wins; 2 Asian Tour wins; and 1 win on the Korn Ferry Tour. He’s been on a Walker Cup winning team and won the Presidents Cup twice. He’s a Major champion, of course, after securing the PGA Championship in 2017. And, back in 2018, he won his first and, as of yet, only WGC event in the Bridgestone Invitational (now the FedEx St. Jude Invitational).
The problem I’m sure he’d find with that snapshot of his career accomplishments so far, however – apart from the lack of a Ryder Cup, of course (stop it; you know I had to) – is with the final sentence in that paragraph where it says he’s captured just the one WGC. Because for all of us who were watching the final round of the WGC-Mexico Championship three weeks ago – a round he’d gone into as the 54 hole leader – we all know that the Justin Thomas who turned up to the Club de Golf Chapultepec on that Sunday afternoon and shot +2 to wind up finishing in a tie for 6th wasn’t the same JT who’s won all those aforementioned times (including twice already this season).
Having taken a full two weeks off since Mexico, however, I imagine we’ll see an incredibly determined, but perhaps most importantly ‘refreshed’, Justin Thomas rolling into Ponte Vedra Beach this week with eyes on making up for that Sunday blip south of the border. And with his iron play (12th in GIR %) and solid scoring average (4th with 69.231), if he’s managed to eliminate that rather pesky hook off the tee which blighted that final round in Mexico, Justin could well be adding yet another title to that already heaving résumé of his come Sunday evening.
Bryson DeChambeau: For those of you who read my preview for the Arnold Palmer Invitational last week, you’ll have noticed that Bryson also formed part of my Oracles’ Fourball for Bay Hill (with Rickie Fowler, Maverick McNealy & Byeong Hun An rounding out that particular group). Now, whilst the reasons that I gave for why I thought Bryson might do well last week – his record so far this season, his GIR % and his ranking in both ‘Strokes Gained: Off the Tee’ & ‘Strokes Gained: Total’) – still hold true for why I think he could do well at Sawgrass (and, interestingly, he’s actually improved his ranking in ‘Strokes Gained: Off the Tee’ & ‘Strokes Gained: Total’ since last week, moving from 4th & 8th to 3rd & 4th respectively) there’s now another reason which has come to light since his week in Orlando – and that’s just how bloody gritty he is.
Like, as I mentioned in the opening of this article, last weekend at Bay Hill saw some of the toughest conditions we’ve seen all year, with many golfers falling by the wayside and out of contention as a result. Yet, over that same weekend, though his rounds hadn’t been going great, Bryson managed to pull out vital birdies late on the back 9 on Saturday to get back to even par and give himself a chance heading into Sunday; and then did that again on Sunday afternoon to get back under par, post the clubhouse lead and secure, what would be in the end, a solo fourth finish. And what that shows for me is that Bryson DeChambeau is incredibly dogged, yes, but also that he’s getting increasingly comfortable in backing himself to pull off the right shot at the right time and drag himself over the line – something he didn’t do in Dubai back in January, nor in Mexico three weeks ago. But this week at Sawgrass? A place where he’s finished T-37 and T-20 in the two years that he’s played there? If he can get himself in a position to win coming down the stretch on Sunday – which I think he can with his game in the current form that it is – then Bryson will somehow find a way to get it over the line.
Rickie Fowler: Heading into Saturday at last week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational Rickie Fowler was perfectly placed on -3. After successfully navigating the first five holes of his round, however, Rickie played the par 5 6th and par 3 7th in a combined +5 that saw him tumble down the leaderboard as he suddenly found himself +2 thanks to an ugly 9 at 6 (after going in the water twice) and then following that up with a bogey at 7.
Yet despite inflicting such a hammer blow to his chances of winning the tournament, Rickie continued to play – and if my memory serves me correctly, after making a birdie somewhere between 8 and 9, he went on to bogey just the one hole on the back 9, and parred the other eight to post +2 in the clubhouse and give himself an outside chance heading into Sunday. So, like with Bryson above, whilst every reason that I gave for why I thought Rickie could do well at Bay Hill – his ball striking & putting – is still relevant for why I think he could do likewise at Sawgrass, it’s the fact his competitive, gritty mentality appears to be growing stronger as the season develops that makes me really think he could compete this week.
Plus, with the Stadium Course being the enigma that it is, you don’t necessarily have to be in red-hot form heading in there to have a chance to win; and if you want some proof of that fact? When Rickie conjured that incredible finish on the Sunday of the 2015 Players to eventually secure a place in a playoff with Sergio Garcia and Kevin Kisner – a playoff he would go on to win – he did so after coming off the back of a missed cut at the Zurich Classic. So you know what they say about form and class, right?
Paul Casey: At a glance, Paul Casey has been having a steady season thus far in 2020. In the five events that he’s played in, he hasn’t missed a single cut and has posted finishes of T-19 at the Sentry Tournament of Champions (an event he got into after retaining the Valspar Championship last year); T-21 at the American Express; T-64 at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am; T-37 at the Genesis Open; and 11th at the WGC-Mexico Championship. The thing is, however, is that as ‘solid’ as those results undoubtedly are, you can’t help but get the impression that some of them could have been a lot better. I mean, I distinctly remember watching both the Genesis Open and the WGC-Mexico Championship this year and seeing Paul being featured to an extent in the coverage because he was in and around the cusp of being in contention in both of those tournaments. When he ceased to be covered, however, it always came off the back of him being shown missing makeable par putts and just generally having problems with his putter.
Now, since checking his stats for this season thus far, the suspected woes with his putter get backed up by the numbers as Paul is well down the order in pretty much every category that measures what happens when the ball is on the green. In the categories concerned with getting the ball to the green, however, Paul is doing a lot better and it serves to explain why, despite his problems with the flatstick, he’s been posting good finishes. He’s 19th in ‘Strokes Gained: Tee to Green’; 20th in ‘Strokes Gained: Off the Tee’; 9th in ‘Strokes Gained: Approach the Green’; 30th in ‘GIR %’; & 1st in ‘Scrambling from the Fringe’. Like, as you can clearly see, Paul’s long game is in fine shape, so if he can perhaps find a few more fairways this week (he’s currently 72nd in ‘Driving Accuracy’ on 63.94%) and can find something on the greens that gets him rolling in more of the chances he’s giving himself, then he could well join Lee Westwood and Graeme McDowell in chalking up yet another win for the 40+ year old Europeans in 2020.
Title Image Photo Credit: Jasen Vinlove/USA TODAY Sports