↵The 17th hole at the TPC Sawgrass is on the short list of the most famous holes in all of golf. For the players, it’s really nothing more than a short iron or a wedge to a green with some very accessible pin placements. With weather in Florida not exactly cooperating this spring, the most difficult pin placements may not be used this week at The Players Championship, making 17 that much easier for those in the tournament. But the water…ooh the water. ↵
Did the 17th Hole at TPC Sawgrass Get Too Easy All of the Sudden? Not a Chance.
↵↵The island green isn’t small, per se, but the fact that it’s almost entirely ensconced by water makes it seem so much smaller. A YouTube search of the 17th at Sawgrass has hundreds of weekend hackers trying to hit a tee shot onto the green, some with rather hilarious results. But the pros…well, these guys are good, right?↵
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↵↵The PGA Tour does a wonderful job promoting The Players Championship, and centering the coverage around the 17th hole, with online streaming video the entire day to see every single shot into – and sometimes around – the island green. They even had some of the younger players talk about the opportunity of playing the hole. Some wouldn’t admit it’s intimidating. Australian Jason Day wasn’t one of them.↵
↵↵⇥“It’s very intimidating. Especially if you are coming down the final stretch with the lead and there are 15,000 to 20,000 people around the hole. The biggest thing is to trust the wind, trust your club and hit it. Hopefully it will hit dry land. I don’t mind having the crowd around. I’ll just aim in the center of the target. I do remember, though, when Sean O’Hair hit two balls in the water a few years ago. The history can make it intimidating.”↵↵↵Yet during Thursday’s first round, fans who like to see the pros struggle (likely the same people who like to watch figure skaters fall) only had seven chances to see a player hit from the drop zone. Seven out of 145 golfers put the ball in the drink on 17 on Thursday. According to PGATour.com, the players hit the 17th green in regulation a record 91 percent of the time in the first round this year. ↵
↵↵Of those seven players who put a ball in the water, just two of them carded more than a bogey. David Toms two-putted after hitting his shot from the drop zone to just outside seven feet to record a double bogey while Greg Owen put his drop zone chip into the water again, then two-putted from 22 feet for a quadruple bogey.↵
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↵And that's it: seven players, and just two with higher than bogey. I remember watching some years when the wind picks up where it might take just 10 groups to see seven balls go in the pond. In fact, I'm not wrong. According to the PGA, last year saw 14 balls in the first round, and 30 for the tournament, land in the water. In 2008, 20 balls got wet in round one with 64 landing in the water over the course of the weekend (18/10/16 in subsequent rounds). ↵
↵↵Ah, 2007 (thank you, wind) saw 50(!) balls land in the water in the first round. In total, 93 balls landed in the pond that year.↵
↵↵Of course, it does depend on the weather each day, as 2005 saw 68 balls land in the water over the entire tournament, but just seven on the first day and eight on Friday. Over Saturday and Sunday, the 17th at Sawgrass saw 53 balls land short, long or wide. So just because we didn’t get a lot in the water on Thursday, doesn’t mean that more won’t come Friday, or even after the cut.↵
↵↵You can watch the 17th online all day, but you can also play the hole – along with the 16th and 18th – through the PGA Tour’s website. Let’s see if you can beat me…after an eagle on 16, my tee shot on 17 was just outside seven feet, right below the hole. Of course, I left the putt two inches short for the tap-in par. Better than wet, I suppose. I came back with a par on the 18th. In real life, I’d take that run on those holes every time.↵
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This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
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