WHO'S FAVORED?
The impact is that the course will play much firmer and faster than in any prior championship. Won't that benefit long hitters? Not at all, says Dye, who extended a handful of back tees, lengthening the course from 6,954 yards to 7,215 yards, par 72.
"Players will not only have to worry about their carry now, they'll also have to worry about their 'through,' " Dye says, meaning a player must worry that his ball will bound through a fairway into trouble. More than any other course, TPC Sawgrass has an inordinate number of fairways that end abruptly, bisected by lagoons or sand bunkers. Several other holes have S shapes, so tee shots that don't fit the curvature of the hole will run through a dogleg into sand, rough or water.
Few of the changes to the course will be apparent to players or fans when they walk onto the property this May. (Oh, a few might notice that all the old coquina-shell waste bunkers have been converted to conventional sand. "Good players treated those waste areas as an extension of fairways," Dye grumbles.) Far more noticeable are the massive new clubhouse and the re-contoured gallery mounds providing more comfortable seating, their tops widened to make more room for skyboxes and a continuous elevated walkway around the last three holes.
DURING (left): The tour took a mulligan on the clubhouse, knocking down the original and starting over. AFTER (right): The $40 million clubhouse is 77,000 square feet, and it has 63,000 square feet of Spanish tile on the roof.
This is now a golf course, and a championship, that combines attributes of all four majors. If the tour wants, it can grow U.S. Open- and PGA-style rough, because the May dates provide extra growing time. The Players' finish is akin to Augusta National's Amen Corner, only in reverse: a short, gambling par 5 followed by a treacherous little par 3 before the long, hard par 4. And it will surely play British Open firm and fast. The Players Stadium Course will play much like Royal Liverpool did for the British Open last year, forcing players to calculate roll, maneuver shots and invent strategies to avoid hazards and hit targets.
That's the best of all worlds. Not even a major championship can say it has that.
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