TPC at Sawgrass
The Tournament Players Club Sawgrass (TPC Sawgrass) is a golf course in the southeastern United States, located in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, southeast of Jacksonville. Opened 44 years ago in the autumn of 1980, it was the first of several Tournament Players Clubs to be built. It is home to the PGA Tour headquarters and hosts The Players Championship, one of the PGA Tour's signature events, now held in March. Paul and Jerome Fletcher negotiated a deal with the PGA Tour, which included the donation of 415 acres (1.68 km2) for one dollar (the original check is prominently displayed in the clubhouse).
Club information
Ponte Vedra Beach,
Florida, U.S.
7 feet (2 m)
1980, 44 years ago
Resort
36
The Players Championship
(1982–present)
TifEagle Bermuda
Celebration Bermuda[1]
72
7,245 yards (6,625 m)[2]
76.4
Pete Dye, Bobby Weed,
with Jerry Pate
72
6,847 yards (6,261 m)[4]
74.0
134[5]
The TPC Sawgrass is situated in Ponte Vedra Beach's Sawgrass development. It has two individual courses, the Stadium Course and the Valley Course. The Stadium Course was designed by noted golf course architects Pete and Alice Dye, 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, 137-yard (125 m) 17th, known as the "Island Green," one of golf's most recognizable and difficult holes. It has a capacity of 36,000.[6]
The course has been featured for many years on the best-selling Tiger Woods PGA Tour series of video games.
Dye's Valley Course hosted the Web.com Tour Championship from 2013 to 2015.
History[edit]
Built on 415 acres (1.68 km2) in the northeastern Florida swampland, it is about a mile west of the Atlantic Ocean. The course contains many challenging features: 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.[7]
The Tournament Players Championship had been played at adjacent Sawgrass Country Club from 1977 through 1981, one more year than originally planned,[8][9] as heavy rains during construction pushed its debut back a year.[7] When it moved west to the Stadium Course in 1982, the story was not eventual winner Jerry Pate,[10][11][12] but the complaints the players had about the new course, which had supposedly been built in their honor.[13] "It's Star Wars golf, designed by Darth Vader," Ben Crenshaw pronounced.[14] When asked if the TPC suited his playing style, Jack Nicklaus replied, "No, I've never been very good at stopping a 5-iron on the hood of a car."[14] J. C. Snead called the course "90 percent horse manure and 10 percent luck."[14]
Over the following year, Dye tweaked the course, making the greens less severe and replacing several bunkers.[15][16][17][18][19] After the changes, the course became far more playable.[14][20] "Now it's a darn good golf course," Crenshaw said of the improvements.[21]
The course was the site of the U.S. Amateur in August 1994, where 18-year-old Tiger Woods defeated Trip Kuehne in the finals, 2 up,[22] the first of his three consecutive victories.[23]
Former President George H. W. Bush shakes hands with Rear Adm. Joseph Kernan and then received the Professional Golfers Association Tour Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009.
