By Ed Travis
Is The Players the Fifth Major?
This year, as for the past several years, golf media droned on and on about whether or not, The Players Championship should be designated the “fifth major.”
To some this is a pointless exercise, since tour players don’t seem to care. They consider it to be a very important tournament, with the strongest field and largest purse. Past champions of The Players are held in higher esteem, than regular tour event winners.
Most golf fans, however, could care less and file the discussion in the same folder as doing something about slow play.
Slow Play
Speaking of slow play, Players Championship winner, Rory McIlroy made his most recent comment about his fellow tour players slow play,
“Honestly, I think they should just be a little tougher and start penalizing shots earlier, and that would be an easy way to fix it.”
It’s common knowledge the PGA Tour does not insist players adhere to a reasonable time standard so nothing will be done.
New PGA Tour Schedule
The Players is the first important tournament affected by the changing of the season schedule, so the finish will be before the start of football season. This starts a run of one-a-month biggies continuing with the Masters in April, the PGA Championship in May, U.S. Open in June, the British Open in July and in August, the Tour Championship.
The two-month earlier date showed the TPC Sawgrass course at its best giving the field all they could handle with Sunday temperatures in the 50s and winds up to 20 mph. Just what everyone was hoping for, when the March dates were penciled in with added problems created by the over seeding of rye grass.
Europeans dominated the top of the leaderboard.
McIlroy is from Northern Ireland and he led the list of ten European and Internationals among the top 15 finishers. Low American went to 48-year-old Jim Furyk, last year’s Ryder Cup team captain, who finished a remarkable runner-up.
This doesn’t seem to bode well for U.S. teams, either for the Presidents Cup this fall, or the 2020 Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits.
Was No. 17 harder in March than in May? 
We re-learned that the island green is tough to hit even by the best players in the world, who dunked 45 balls for the four rounds.
The number of balls hit into the water at Alice Dye’s nightmare over the previous five years, when The Players was held in May: 2018 (54), 2107 (69), 2016 (36), 2015 (45), 2014 (28).
So, the answer is March, or May, the 17th is difficult to find.
Where was Tiger Woods?
Tiger Woods’ performance was uninspiring and not, “Better than most,” as said Gary Koch so eloquently said in 2001, referring to Woods curling putt on the 17th.
Woods’ ho-hum game could be illustrated with his quadruple bogey on the island green in round two and again on Sunday, in the final round, at the par-5 16th. He was at 3-under par for the round and hit his second 30 yards right of the green into the water. He did, however, make a very nice up and down for par.
Woods was never a contender and with the Masters a month away, he needs a lot more game to be in the mix at Augusta.
Fans were heartened though by no sign of any physical problems including the neck, which caused his withdrawal at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. The question remains. Should we be looking at Woods as a 43-year old former great, with some physical issues, marking time for the PGA Tour Champions, or the dynamic previously dominating player, on his way to full recovery?
Rules were once again an issue at The Players
Harold Varner III was assessed a two-stroke penalty for replacing a cracked driver head with a new one on the course, rather than putting an entirely different driver in play.
He only had 13 clubs in his bag and was allowed to add an additional club or replace the broken one, but his mistake was made when he assembled the new club on the course, instead of in the clubhouse or locker room. Assembling a replacement club on the course is a violation of the rules.
Got the Old ABC Band Back Together Again
In case you missed it on Friday’s television coverage, Paul Azinger now with NBC and Nick Faldo, with the Golf Channel, worked with former broadcast buddy, Mike Tirico during the first two rounds. It was a pleasant reminder of the trio’s great work at ABC and ESPN.
