Players Championship not ready for rank of Major

Mike Dudurich

Posted 2009-04-30

There is very little associated with next week’s Players Championship in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. that could ever be seriously viewed as “laughable,” other than, of course, the nothing that this spectacular PGA Tour event should be considered as golf’s “Fifth Major.”

More on that in a minute.

Conceived as a tournament for card-carrying Tour professionals only – no amateurs, no club pros – the Players has evolved from a wind-blown, circus-like atmosphere in its infancy at Sawgrass Country Club, just across busy route A1A from the TPC at Sawgrass.

That club was named the home of this event after it shifted from Atlanta to Colonial to Inverrary in its first three years. As it sometimes will do in March … in northeast Florida, the winds howled there, creating horrendous conditions for golf and, in a lot of cases, embarrassing some of the best players in the game.

When it moved across the road, there were still a few years during which the weather played havoc with the best-struck shots, but, for the most part, the TPC at Sawgrass has been the perfect site for the biggest and best tournament – outside the four majors – played each year on Tour.

Do you remember 1982? It was the inaugural Players Championship at the TPC at Sawgrass and it culminated with champion Jerry Pate, Tour commissioner Deane Beman and course designer Pete Dye taking the plunge into the lake that abuts the left side of the 18th green.

It didn’t take long for the Players Championship to become the crown jewel of the Florida Swing. For many years, it held a spot on the annual schedule two weeks before the Masters. The best players in the world could play the first, high-pressure, big-money tournament of the year, take a week off if those chose and be ready to take on Augusta National. Some players would play the week between the two as well.

But as the years passed by, more and more players started referring to the Players as a great preparation for the Masters. They were playing a very stout golf course in sometimes difficult conditions, with hard, fast, sloping greens that at least gave them a bit of a clue about what they’d be facing in Georgia. There was always a big influx of media into the Jacksonville area when the players held that slot on the calendar. It was a great time for journalists to have access to the best field of the year from which to get information for their pre-Masters stories and reports.

Truth be told, all of that Masters talk started to irritate the heck out of the folks at PGA Tour headquarters – conveniently located a driver and pitching wedge from the first tee of the Stadium Course at the TPC at Sawgrass.

They wanted this demanding tournament to stand on its own, so much so that the moving of the Players Championship to May was one of the key components of a reshuffling of the PGA Tour schedule in 2007.

Not only did the move get the Tour’s premier event away from the Masters, but it now aligns the Tour schedule with its’ four majors and the Players Championship contested each month from April through August.

And, of course, having the Players Championship in its own spot lends credence to the argument that the Players should be deemed a major.

The question has been asked to players, tournament and Tour officials, anyone who’ll stand still long enough to answer. More and more, the answer has been the politically correct one: Well, it’s a great tournament, probably the best field we have all year, at a great golf course. I don’t know if you can call it a major, but it’s very big.

In reality, politically correctness isn’t necessary. Next week’s Players Championship will be the 35th. The other three majors were just beginning to hit their stride at 35. Tradition and history evolve in time.

Fifty or 60 years from now, the Players Championship may have taken its place along with the other classics in professional golf. But who’s to know that?

Professional golf as we know it may be completely different by that time. Bottom line? The Players Championship is a great event. If you’ve attended it in recent years, you know the venue is spectacular; the new 20,000 square foot clubhouse is a monument to modern excess. It has the island green 17th hole, which has become one of the most famous holes in golf.

But is it a major?

Nah, not yet. Give it some time to grow up.

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About Mike...
As a sports writer for over 35 years, Mike Dudurich has seen a lot of great things, covered spectacular events, but his passion is, and has been golf. He recently ended a 29-year career at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and will now be a frequent contributor on GolfGearReview.com. Mike hosts a weekly golf radio show on 1250 ESPN in Pittsburgh from the beginning of April through the end of August. The show airs Saturdays from 8-9 a.m. and can be heard online at http://stations.espn.go.com/stations/espnradio1250/show?showId=insidepghgolf - Listen to Mike Here!.

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