TPC at Sawgrass
Encyclopedia
The Tournament Players Club at Sawgrass, colloquially known as TPC at Sawgrass, is a well-known golf course
Golf course
A golf course comprises a series of holes, each consisting of a teeing ground, fairway, rough and other hazards, and a green with a flagstick and cup, all designed for the game of golf. A standard round of golf consists of playing 18 holes, thus most golf courses have this number of holes...

 in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida
Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida
Ponte Vedra Beach is an unincorporated seaside community in St. Johns County, Florida, United States. Located eighteen miles southeast of downtown Jacksonville and north of St. Augustine, it is part of the Jacksonville Beaches area. It is an upmarket tourist resort area best known for its...

, a suburb of Jacksonville
Jacksonville, Florida
Jacksonville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Florida in terms of both population and land area, and the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. It is the county seat of Duval County, with which the city government consolidated in 1968...

. Opened in 1980, it was the first of several Tournament Players Club
Tournament Players Club
Tournament Players Club is a chain of public and private golf courses operated by the PGA Tour. Most of the courses either are or have been hosts for PGA Tour events, with the remainder having frequently hosted events on the second-tier Nationwide Tour or the over-50s Champions Tour.The first...

s to be built. It is home to the PGA Tour
PGA Tour
The PGA Tour is the organizer of the main men's professional golf tours in the United States and North America...

 headquarters and annually hosts The Players Championship
The Players Championship
The Players Championship is an annual golf tournament on the PGA Tour.Originally known as the Tournament Players Championship, the inaugural event in 1974 was played at Atlanta Country Club in Marietta, Georgia before moving to the Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas in 1975 and Inverrary...

, the PGA Tour's flagship event.

The TPC at Sawgrass is situated in Ponte Vedra Beach's Sawgrass
Sawgrass, Florida
Sawgrass is a census-designated place in St. Johns County, Florida, United States. The population was 4,942 at the 2000 census. The aura is located in one of the most prestigious region of Florida, Ponte Vedra Beach.-Geography:...

 development. It has two individual courses, the Stadium Course and the Valley Course. The Stadium Course was designed in 1980 by noted golf course architects Pete
Pete Dye
Paul B. "Pete" Dye is a world-renowned golf course designer and a member of a famous family of course designers. He is married to fellow designer and former amateur champion Alice Dye.-Early life:Pete Dye was born in Urbana, Ohio...

 and Alice Dye
Alice Dye
Alice Dye is an American golf champion and golf course designer known as the "First Lady" of golf architecture in the United States....

, and is known as one of the most difficult golf courses in the world. Constructed specifically to host The Players Championship, it employs a distinctive "stadium" concept: like in other sports, fans at the TPC sit in "stands" made of raised mounds of grass. It is known for its signature hole, the par-3, 132-yard 17th, known simply as the "Island Green", one of golf's most recognizable and difficult holes.
The course has been featured for many years on the best-selling Tiger Woods PGA Tour
Tiger Woods PGA Tour
Tiger Woods PGA TOUR is a series of video games developed and published by Electronic Arts featuring professional golfer Tiger Woods, among other pros on the PGA Tour....

 golf game series.

History

Over 415 acres (1.7 km²) in the Florida swampland, Dye's masterpiece defined the term "eating golf": narrow fairways lined with hazards like marshes and "waste bunkers" (long strips of sand that groundskeepers never maintain); dozens of deep "pot bunkers," strategically placed to catch even a slightly misplaced shot; thick rough that features craters and mounds; tall, shot-obstructing palm trees; and rock-hard, lightning-fast greens. When the first Tournament Players Championship was staged at the Stadium Course in 1982, the story was not eventual winner Jerry Pate
Jerry Pate
Jerome Kendrick "Jerry" Pate is an American golfer.Jerry Pate was born in Macon, Georgia. He attended the University of Alabama, where he played on the golf team. Pate had a distinguished amateur career. He won the U.S. Amateur in 1974, and the following year he was a member of victorious U.S....

 but the complaints the players had about the course, a track supposedly built in their honor. "It's Star Wars
Star Wars
Star Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...

golf, designed by Darth Vader
Darth Vader
Darth Vader is a central character in the Star Wars saga, appearing as one of the main antagonists in the original trilogy and as the main protagonist in the prequel trilogy....

," Ben Crenshaw
Ben Crenshaw
Ben Daniel Crenshaw is an American professional golfer.Crenshaw was born in Austin, Texas. He attended and played golf at Austin High School and the University of Texas, where he won three NCAA Championships from 1971 to 1973...

 pronounced. When asked if the TPC suited his playing style, Jack Nicklaus
Jack Nicklaus
Jack William Nicklaus , nicknamed "The Golden Bear", is an American professional golfer. He won 18 career major championships on the PGA Tour over a span of 25 years and is widely regarded as one of the greatest professional golfers of all time. In addition to his 18 Majors, he was runner-up a...

 replied, "No, I've never been very good at stopping a 5-iron on the hood of a car." J. C. Snead called the course "90 percent horse manure and 10 percent luck." Over the following year, Dye tweaked the course, making the greens less severe and replacing several bunkers. After the changes, the course became far more playable and the players look forward to taking it on. "Now it's a darn good golf course," Crenshaw said of the improvements.

The "Island Green"

TPC Sawgrass' signature hole is the Stadium Course's 17th, known simply as the "Island Green", although it is technically a peninsula. While some may consider it gorgeous to view, the hole has been known to scare even the top professional golfers. It measures only 132 yards (120.7 m) from tee to green (requiring only a pitching wedge
Pitching wedge
A pitching wedge is a wedge used to hit a shot with higher and shorter trajectory than a 9-iron and a lower and longer trajectory than a gap wedge.-Design/history:...

 for most pros), but it consists of nothing but an undulating, 78 feet (23.8 m)-long green with a tiny bunker in front of it. Save a small path to the green, the green is completely surrounded by water, and its location amidst a canyon of trees causes the wind to swirl over the it. Club selection in the weather conditions at 17 is a huge consideration, as there is nowhere to land the ball but on the green – or in the water. It is estimated that over 100,000 balls are retrieved from the surrounding water every year, courtesy of professionals and tourists alike trying their luck.

According to the TPC Sawgrass website, the design came by accident. The original design for the 17th was to be a simple par-3 green only partially surrounded by a lake. However, the soil surrounding the 17th consisted of sand – necessary to build a good golf course, but rare on the otherwise swampy property – and by the time the course was near completion all the sand had been dug from the area, leaving a large crater. Alice Dye suggested the Island Green concept, remembering another course with a similar green; Pete was not thrilled at the idea but went ahead with it, in the process creating one of golf's most recognizable holes.

Because of its enduring popularity among fans, NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

 devotes 11 cameras to it during the tournament.

Probably the most famous incident that has occurred on the Island Green involved Steve Lowery
Steve Lowery
Stephen Brent Lowery is an American professional golfer.Lowery was born in Birmingham, Alabama. He has PGA Tour victories in 1994, 2000 and 2008. All three of his victories on the PGA Tour have come in playoffs....

 in the 1998 Players Championship. His tee shot successfully landed on the green, a feat in itself. Then a seagull swooped onto the green and picked up his ball several times. The gull found it difficult to hold the ball in its bill, but finally managed to carry it into the air and over the water, where it dropped it. All of this was filmed and can be seen on Youtube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

, among other sites. One of the TV commentators quipped that the 17th now had yet another hazard. Under
Rule 18-1 of the Rules of Golf, as a bird is considered an "outside agency" and as Lowery's shot was from off the green, he was permitted to replace the ball at the spot where the ball initially came to rest on the green.

In May 2007, a record 50 balls landed in the water at the 17th hole in one round, which broke the single-round tournament record of 45 set in 2000.

During Super Bowl XXXIX
Super Bowl XXXIX
Super Bowl XXXIX was an American football game played on February 6, 2005, at Alltel Stadium in Jacksonville, Florida, to decide the National Football League champion following the 2004 regular season...

 in the area, Fox Sports organized a "closest to pin" contest with MLB, NFL, and NASCAR players (all sports properties of the network) on the 17th green; Dale Jarrett
Dale Jarrett
Dale Arnold Jarrett is a former American race car driver and current sports commentator known for winning the 1999 NASCAR Winston Cup Series championship...

 defeated Trent Green
Trent Green
Trent Jason Green is a retired professional American football quarterback. He was drafted by the San Diego Chargers in the eighth round of the 1993 NFL Draft. He played college football at Indiana University....

 and John Smoltz
John Smoltz
John Andrew Smoltz is an American former Major League Baseball pitcher and active sportscaster. He is best known for his prolific career of more than two decades with the Atlanta Braves, in which he garnered eight All-Star selections and received the Cy Young Award in 1996...

in the final by being the only player to make it on the green.

External links

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