For several years, The Players has been my favorite golf tournament – more so than any of the Four that make up the Grand Slam, including The Masters. It’s the par-3 17th hole that has grabbed my attention. It’s an island hole, which leads to the best golfers in the world dumping their tee shots in the water.
I’ve envisioned some children I know sending their father to the tournament. I see myself with a lawn chair, perched just behind the 17th tee, protected from the sun, watching those shots splashing into the water, just short of the island green, 135 yards away. (As it’s my birthday week, that doesn’t seem like an inordinate gift divided six ways.)
The tournament is at TPC Sawgrass’s Stadium Course, Ponte Vedra Beach, up the “right side” of Florida. It’s about 500 miles from Key West. I could drive it, couldn’t I? But be careful what you wish for. Thursday, March 10, was to be the first day of the tournament, concluding on Sunday. It was a miserable day and week, as rain, heavy at times, kept pushing the tournament back. On Sunday, when the tournament was still only in its second round, golfers started out at 8:30 a.m., when the temperature was in the 30s.
When I was younger, I loved to play golf, but I was never very good. I remember playing in the pouring rain with my late son Joshua at Heatherwoode Golf Club near Dayton, Ohio. I was not a happy golfer. I was a soaked golfer.
So I was content over the weekend, listening to the Golf and NBC announcers, telling me what was going on between raindrops. One of the announcers was Paul Azinger, who used to be a very competent professional golfer. One evening in Key West, my late wife Patsy and I found a parking place in a lot off Duval. To get to the bar on Duval, we had to jump down off a wall. When we were headed back down Appelrouth Lane, we had to climb up the wall. I made it, but couldn’t get Patsy up there. Suddenly, a young man appeared. He graciously lifted my wife and placed her up on the wall. “Aren’t you who I think you are?” she exclaimed. And it was. Paul Azinger. We had probably seen him play when we went to The Memorial a few times near Columbus, Ohio. Patsy recognized him. I didn’t.
Rain kept interrupting The Players. They finally finished the third round on Monday morning. All the interruptions gave me opportunities to watch some very good college basketball tournaments and eventually the draws for the men’s and women’s March Madness tournaments Sunday evening. But I was back on the Golf Channel when the leaders teed off for the fourth and final round at 1 p.m. Monday.
The story at that time was Anirban Lahiri, who’s from India and ranked 300-and-something among the world’s golfers. He has painted the back of his irons to give them more weight. While he had never won in the United States he has recorded seven wins in Asia. While he and other “unknowns,” as the announcers called them, were leaving their mark, several well known golfers had fallen victim to the water hole and just poor play. My favorite male golfer, Jordan Spieth, was 7 over and missed the cut.
The winner was to get $3.6 million and the remaining field of players would divide $20 million, both PGA records. You don’t suppose that much money had some golfers nervous, do you? There was a lot of movement up and down the leaderboard Monday afternoon before the rains reappeared, but did not interrupt. Australian Cameron Smith birdied the first four holes and passed Lahiri. Paul Casey, Keegan Bradley, Kevin Kisner, Russell Knox, Tom Hoge, Viktor Hovland, Adam Hadwin, Daniel Berger and Tyrrell Hatton made good and big moves along the way. But, Cameron Smith recovered from going into the water on 18 and won the $3.6 million. Maybe he’d like to sponsor a birthday boy’s trip to The Players next year.
