Shiny new Sawgrass welcomes the world's best in May
By Dan Lubin | CBS SportsLine.com staff
Few would dispute the broadly-held judgment that the Players Championship is among the finest tournaments on the golf calendar. The TPC Sawgrass’ Stadium Course is highly esteemed, the purse has been the world’s fattest for years and the field quality is second to none.
While the PGA Tour’s premier event is successful by any standards, nobody would accuse it of being complacent. In fact, one could almost suspect that the PGA Tour’s restless fussing on behalf of its most cherished tournament borders on the pathological.
How else do we understand the extravagant expenditure of $60 million on the renovation of a venue which has drawn nothing but praise from opinion-makers?
Almost the very week after the 2006 Players Championship, work began on the ambitious facelift at the Tournament Players Club. The project comprised not only significant renovations of the Stadium Course, which were supervised by the layout’s original designer, Pete Dye, but an equally large-scale reconstruction of the clubhouse and the surrounding grounds.
On the course, every green was fitted with a state-of-the-art subterranean moisture control system.
For the fairways, a technologically advanced irrigation and drainage system was installed to ensure an appropriate degree of firmness.
Underpinning the whole face of the course is over 26,000 tons of water-draining sand that was hauled in to replace the soft mucky soil which the course initially had been built upon.
And the playing surface is now completely Bermuda grass, utterly free of the multi-seasonal rye overseed that previously constituted a good portion of the terrain. Add to this a generous cropping of new trees, running the gamut of oak, palms and pines.
The combination of all these new features will mean that the Stadium Course represents one of the fastest stretches of golf found anywhere on the planet. Dye and Co. hope that players, challenged with a new passel of perils, will be forced to think more strategically on the course. That’s why the added yardage of 120 yards isn’t being seen as an accommodation for the long hitters on tour.
But back to the original question. The course upgrade can be justified on competitive grounds, but what exactly does the erection of a lavish palace framing the scene at No. 18 do in the overall scheme of things? What warrants such an expense? To reiterate, $60 million?
The answer to this becomes apparent when the Sawgrass project is placed within the context of an even grander scheme that the PGA Tour, led by its Napoleonic commissioner, Tim Finchem, has been hatching for several years.
Pressure to improve, after all, rarely comes from self-induced striving.
The PGA Tour faces the harsh reality that the major championships and big name players exercise a huge influence over the entire golf scene.
