Most golf fans have a list of famous courses they long to play and here in the U.S. not many are more familiar to fans, serious or casual, than TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra, Florida. Corporate home of the PGA Tour. TPC Sawgrass hosts The PLAYERS Championship each spring and boasts the best field in world tournament golf.
Well the field this Sunday was somewhat less than stellar, as two hundred golf nuts paid big bucks to take a crack at Pete Dye’s storied masterpiece. Among those eager masochists were my three buddies from the snow ravaged Boston area and, yours truly, a recent winter refugee who has taken up homestead in nearby St. Augustine.
This was the final round scheduled on this quick “buddies trip”and we knew we were in for a real test as soon as we drove onto the property and saw how closely mown the grassed areas were surrounding the driveway up to the massive Spanish hacienda style clubhouse. Tight lies for everyone!
We also had an opening glimpse of how expansive and comprehensive the vision of Dean Beman and Pete Dye was when the idea of stadium golf, with the TPC Sawgrass as the centerpiece, took hold back in the ‘70’s.
TPC Sawgrass, as you would expect, offers a wide array of practice facilities with multiple putting greens, a chipping green with bunkers, and a double ended driving range where the far end is reserved for Tour Pros. Some among our group took advantage of the practice ground while others thought their time better spent securing some liquid nourishment at the clubhouse bar.
After grinding through a five hour round the previous day at the Slammer and Squire course at World Golf Village, we were concerned that this round might drag out even longer. That would put a lot of pressure on my compadre’s who had an evening flight back home. But the folks at TPC have a system in place that helps keep groups on track to meet their target time of 4 hours 30 minutes.
Their secret is to assign a forecaddie to each riding group. It’s a cart path’s only course, so without a knowledgeable guide who also doubles as a sheep herder keeping foursomes moving at pace, a round could easily blow through the five hour time slot.
Our shepherd for the day was Marco, a fast talking 50ish transplant from Annapolis, who tracked down our errant balls, gave us yardage’s for each shot, told us where to hit it and where not to hit it (we didn’t take his advice on that as often as he’d like) read our putts and, when we were faced with tough or impossible shots quipped “sometimes you just got to be a player”.
The term target golf was likely coined as way to depict the shot placement demands of Pete Dye’s walk though these woods. I found the fairways to be wider than expected but the key is to be in the right place in the fairway, to keep from being blocked to the green or to give you a reasonable chance of holding the green with your approach. We’ll just say we didn’t hold all that many greens, which were very firm and well defended.
The green complexes reminded me of a typical Scottish links course in some ways, with mounds and hillocks that guided your ball into postage stamp pot bunkers, or down steep slopes to sand five to eight feet below the green level. Throw in some false fronts, humps and ridges, and shaved runways to the water’s edge and your looking at scores that require the use of both hands to calculate!
But I’m not complaining (not much). The challenge is part of the draw of this place. And the pinnacle of the challenge, the one each golfer is thinking about all day long, is that short little hole near the end of the round – #17.
The prelude to #17 deserves it’s due, however. Each hole stands alone, distinctive in it’s own right. This is a huge property, unencumbered by housing rimming the perimeter of the holes, unlike most every other golf course in Florida I’ve played. Mature forest and specimen trees abound, with a number of trees dictating play, especially on #7, #11 and #16.
By the time we arrived at #17, the rain that came at the start of the back nine had stopped. Our group had made it’s fair share of contributions to the golf gods (I’m guessing 20 little spherical offerings) and had also consumed it’s fair share of invigorating beverages.
The rain was gone but not the wind. It was back into us and swirling a bit.
First up was Mike, who hit a towering ball to the right backside of the green. It bounced into a wooden support for a temporary walkway that is attached to the back perimeter bulkhead of the green put in place for the winter months. One woody but it’s safe, on the green but a long par putt.
Next up is Eric who pulls his tee shot well left of the green, near the grassed walkway that accesses the green. It hits the wooden bulkhead, caroms up into the seating that’s been erected, and ricochets back onto the grass, hanging up just short of the water. Two tee-balls hit wood but neither is in the water!
I’m next man up, and my over clubbed shot hits the wooden bulkhead on the back right side of the green, pops 30 feet in the air and lands on the sloped banking on the far side of the pond. Three balls, all hitting wood but still none are wet!
The best was saved for last, as Paul put a smooth stroke on a 9 iron pin high, twelve feet right of the cup!
Our caddie Marco had thought he’d seen it all but he admitted that in all his years there he’d never seen such a talented group that could have three tee balls hit wood and not one went swimming. When you’re good, you’re good.
None in our group came close to shooting a score we hoped for or representative of our handicap indexes. But we never really expected that. Our foursome better ball score was an 8 over par 80.
But playing the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass was not about going low. It was about going.
Related Articles
