2013 Players Championship: Tiger Woods claims the title

Tiger Woods’ simmering tiff with Sergio Garcia boiled over during the weekend and made for terrific TV viewing Saturday at The Players Championship. The public squabble certainly added a healthy dollop of drama to Sunday’s proceedings, as the 14-time major champion overcame a water hazard down the stretch to win the tourney while the owner of no major trophies double-dunked his way out of a potential playoff with his BFF and finished in a tie for eighth.

Only Garcia knows whether the airing of their mutual antipathy had anything to do with his stunning collapse on the notorious par-3 17th hole. Anyone within earshot of a television, however, is aware of what the stars of “As the Golf Ball Drops” had to say about what happened on the second hole of the third round at TPC Sawgrass. Tiger was left of center in the trees and pulling his 5-wood out of his bag to the cheers of fans, and Sergio mishit his shot and then stared daggers in his opponent’s direction.

Tiger Woods was leading the field by two shots and had command of The Players Championship Sunday afternoon when he reached the 14th tee at TPC Sawgrass. One pop up to short left and an iffy penalty drop later, NBC’s Johnny Miller went berserk over what he believed was another in a continuing series of questionable ball drops by golf’s No. 1 ranked player.

“That Tiger drop was really, really borderline,” Miller said after Woods hit his tee shot into the water hazard to the left of the fairway and took a drop (with accompanying penalty stroke after a confab with playing partner Casey Wittenberg and his looper) in a spot that appeared to be more favorable than warranted. “I can’t live with myself without saying that.”

Tiger Woods may have won 13 of his 14 majors with Steve Williams handing him his clubs, but his new caddie, Joe LaCava, is working out pretty well.

After winning the Players Championship on Sunday, Woods credited LaCava with convincing him he could conquer the challenging TPC Sawgrass Stadium Course, a layout that had bedeviled the world’s No. 1 golfer since he earned his first Players title in 2001.

Writing about Tiger Woods can be pretty tedious.

When things are going well for him, the headlines come easy. You basically have a template from which to work for every tournament Tiger wins. Just delete the name and city of the previous victory and type in the info from his latest achievement. The story often remains the same; we just need to fill in the details. Such has been the case for most of Tiger’s career.

Tiger Woods was in the scorer’s trailer when Sergio Garcia put the last of three balls in the water down the stretch to fall out of contention for the 2013 Players Championship. Somehow, however, Garcia still managed to blame his nemesis for distracting him during Saturday’s third round.

“It sounds like I was the bad guy here,” Garcia told reporters after posting a final-round 4-over 76 that included a quadruple-bogey 7 on the par-3 17th and a double on the last. “I was the victim. I don’t have any regrets about anything.”

Tiger Woods had to survive a bumpy ride on the back nine, but he won the 2013 Players Championship at Sawgrass.

Sergio Garcia had pulled into a tie with Woods at 13-under, but twice found the water on the par-3 17th hole and carded a 7, ruining any chance he had of winning. Over the final two holes, Garcia went from a tie for first at 13-under to a tie for eighth at 7-under. Woods found water himself on the 14th hole and the ensuing double bogey completely wiped out his two-stroke lead. He shook it off though, and retook the lead on the 16th hole with a birdie.

Tiger Woods won his first Players Championship since 2001 -- and his fourth tournament of the year -- after firing a final round 70 on Sunday afternoon at the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass.

The victory would not come easy. A slew of players remained on Tiger’s tail throughout the day, including the likes of Sergio Garcia, Martin Laird, David Lingmerth and Jeff Maggert. Woods played his first five holes in steady form and looked like he would begin pulling away from the field. Standing on the No. 6 tee box at TPC Sawgrass, Tiger held a one-shot lead at 13-under par before carding his first bogey of the day a few moments later.

An hour ago, I wrote that the 2013 Players Championship Tiger Woods’ to lose and all he needed to do is avoid a blow-up hole, particularly at No. 14 where he’s historically had trouble. Welp, Tiger didn’t exactly stick to the script of safely conserving his two-shot lead coming into the clubhouse.

At No. 14, the hole where Woods is most uncomfortable on the course, Tiger absolutely pulled a fairway wood into the lake down the left side. Woods ball went came hard left right off the tee, crossing over the bunker that abuts the fairway and then diving into the drink. His ball went left so quickly that it crossed the red stake marked hazard way back around where the fairway starts just off the tee. According to Golf Channel’s Tiger Tracker, the drop was about 40 yards in front of the women’s tees.

Tiger Woods is still in control at The Players Championship, and at 14-under par and with only a two-stroke lead, his opponents are running out of opportunities to catch him.

Woods knocked in three birdies and a bogey on the front nine, but has stretched his lead to two strokes after a birdie on the 12th hole. Jeff Maggert is alone in second place behind Tiger at 12-under par, but he’s one hole ahead of Woods on the course so if he wants to make a move, time is running out. Both Woods and Maggert are currently 3-under on the day.

It appears that Tiger Woods, the best closer in the history of the sport, is on his way to his fourth win of the season and win No. 78 for his career at The Players Championship on Sunday.

Midway through his final round, Woods is currently 13-under for the tournament, two shots ahead of the field.

The par-4 fourth hole at TPC Sawgrass was an adventure for Swede Henrik Swenson. The Stadium Course is sometimes criticized as a tricked-up made-for-TV design, and Stenson’s approach at No. 4 was comparable to a mini-golf excursion through various course props.

Stenson sent his drive completely off the course and had to punch back out at almost a 90-degree angle. But he put too much on it and the ball came bounding down the cart path, where it fortuitously settled on a bridge.

Tiger Woods is certainly playing like he’s going to win The Players Championship for the first time since 2001, as he’s come out scorching hot in his final round at TPC-Sawgrass. Woods has birdied two of his first five holes -- and nearly birdied the other three -- to take sole possession of first place.

Woods entered the day in a tie with nemesis Sergio Garcia and unknown Swede David Lingmerth, but he’s since pulled ahead. He now sits at 13-under, one stroke ahead of Lingmerth and two ahead of Garcia. He’s playing near-perfect golf: Woods has hit every green in regulation and has either birdied every hole or seen a chance at birdie burn the edge of the cup.

Sunday at Sawgrass is mostly a countdown to the eagerly anticipated final round of play between Tiger Woods and Sergio Garcia -- and David Lingmerth -- who are tied atop the leaderboard at 11-under. But until they get under way, some golfers a bit lower on the leaderboard are making headway with strong play.

Tim Herron is 3-under through six holes, pushing him into a tie for 18th at 5-under. He joins Masters winner Adam Scott, who birdied his first hole of the day. Bubba Watson, Angel Cabrera, and Zach Johnson all birdied one of their first two holes on the day, and all sit at 4-under in a tie for 28th. It would take pretty whopping comebacks from all of these guys to contend, but they can push their way up the money list with nice finishes.

The final round pairings are now set at The Players Championship, with the first groups going off just 35 minutes after the third round concluded first thing Sunday morning. The PGA Tour made the decision to re-pair the golfers for the fourth round because so many players were able to finish on Saturday night, and the leaders got so far into their round. So there was no need to keep the players together in rolling succession in order to get the final round in on Sunday.

Unfortunately, that means Sergio Garcia and Tiger Woods will not play together again. The two finished Sunday morning with the same score, 11-under, but so did David Lingmerth. Thus, the Garcia-Woods group, whose drama has dominated the entire weekend at TPC Sawgrass, will be broken up and Sergio will go off in the final pairing of the day with Lingmerth. Sergio makes the last group because he had the honor on the tee on Saturday, holding the lead over Woods and getting the first tee shot. After the round, Garcia said it was for the best that the two be split up, but Tiger didn’t seem to care too much either way.

The third round is now complete after an early Sunday morning conclusion at The Players Championship, and it’s Tiger Woods, Sergio Garcia, and David Lingmerth sharing the lead at 11-under. Unfortunately, Tiger and Sergio, who exchanged barbs on Saturday to take their relationship from chilly to hostile, will not be paired together. Garcia will be out in the afternoon in the final group with Lingmerth, with Tiger one group ahead.

Lingmerth started the morning with a two-shot lead over Woods and Garcia, but he promptly gave back a shot at the dicey 18th hole. Lingmerth started with a tee shot on the 18th, one of the most difficult and intimidating tee shots on the PGA Tour. He sent his ball way right into the trees, and made bogey to drop to 11-under.

It will be a long Sunday at the 2013 Players Championship, with both the conclusion of the third round and the final round on the schedule. Some inclement weather delayed the golf late Saturday afternoon, and eight players were unable to complete their round before another line of dark clouds forced the Tour officials to call play due to darkness.

The third round will restart at 7 a.m. ET, with the final pairing of Tiger Woods and Sergio Garcia still having four holes to play. It was a day full of drama for the superstar pairing as Garcia took some time during the rain delay to blame Tiger for causing a commotion which led to a poor Sergio approach shot on No. 2. Tiger, of course, was aware of the comments as they went back out to play eight more holes before the darkness. When the players came in around 8 p.m., they indirectly exchanged barbs about the controversy, setting the stage for a tense finish on Sunday morning.

Tiger Woods vs. Sergio Garcia at TPC Sawgrass on Saturday was no Tiger-Rory love fest -- not that anyone expected the long-time antagonists to hold hands and skip down the fairways in their much-hyped third round of The Players Championship.

Garcia and Woods added a new, testy chapter to their one-sided would-be rivalry when the 33-year-old Spaniard blamed the 14-time major winner for his own poor shot moments after they began their round.

Inclement weather has affected the PGA Tour almost every single week in the 2013 season, and that trend continued at the Players Championship. A couple different lines of thunderstorms moved into the Ponte Vedra Beach area late in the afternoon, interrupting play for the final groups still out on the course and pushing the conclusion of the third round to a Sunday morning restart at 7 a.m. ET

The rain had pounded TPC Sawgrass prior to the tournament, dumping more than 10 inches of water just before the game’s fifth major was scheduled to tee off. At one point, the island green at No. 17 was under water just days before the start. Luckily for the Tour, which has dealt with rain, snow, wind, and lightning so far this year, the first two days, with more cumbersome and full 145 players in the field, went off without delay. Saturday’s weather stoppage should not affect play too much, unless more inclement weather blankets the area and forces yet another Monday finish with Tiger Woods involved.

Tiger Woods and Sergio Garcia really don’t like each other, something that was more than apparent when the two golfers barely acknowledged each other’s existence during 14 holes of their weather-delayed third round at TPC Sawgrass on Saturday.

Garcia escalated the cold war between the two when he complained to NBC’s Steve Sands during the lightning-induced break that Woods was to blame for his errant shot on the second hole. After darkness forced officials to call it quits for the day, Woods responded to Garcia’s charge, which elicited an equally sassy retort from the Spaniard.

The third round of the 2013 Players Championship was suspended on Saturday with the leaders still on the course. The round was interrupted by a weather delay earlier in the round and darkness forced play to be suspended a second time at 7:48 p.m. ET. David Lingmerth, who has one hole to play in the third round, is the current leader at 12-under.

Lingmerth is 4-under through 17 holes, holding a two-stroke lead over Henrik Stenson, Sergio Garcia and Tiger Woods. Woods and Garcia, playing in the final group, chose to not finish their hole and will instead resume play with their second shots on No. 15. Woods is even-par on his round while Garcia is 1-over for the day. Stenson chose to finish his final hole, despite the darkness, and was able to make a par on No. 16.

Welp, the relationship between Tiger Woods and Sergio Garcia was already a bit frosty, but after the Spaniard’s comments during Saturday’s rain delay at the Players Championship, it may turn outwardly hostile. The two are playing in the much-hyped final pairing in the third round at TPC Sawgrass, and Garcia started the day with a one-shot lead.

But that lead disappeared by the second hole, as a two-shot swing flipped each player’s position less than a half-hour into the round. Tiger made birdie on the par-5 second to move to 9-under on those nine holes so far this week. Sergio, on the other hand, sent his second shot way into the woods on the right and could not recover to save par. As soon as he made the swing, Sergio glared to his left, where Tiger was busy fussing around in the trees and pondering how to come back out on his second shot. Garcia incredulously shook his head, and Golf Channel’s Tiger Tracker said he looked “pissed” about Woods potentially provoking crowd noise over in the trees.