The Players Championship 2014: Leaderboard, live updates, scores from TPC Sawgrass

A big reason why the strongest field of the season shows up for The Players Chamapionship is all that cash up for grabs. It’s the richest purse in golf, and has been for some time. This year’s pot was pushed to $10 million, which meant the winner would get $100k more than Tiger Woods earned for last year’s win.

So shortly after Martin Kaymer just won the biggest cash game in the sport, you’d expect him to have the private jet gassed up for Dallas, where he’s playing in this week’s Byron Nelson. Instead, thanks to Stephanie Wei, we found out Kaymer was slumming it just like the rest of us at the nearby Jacksonville airport. Wei captured Kaymer just hanging out on the airport floor, trying to get a charge like the rest of the great unwashed.

Tiger Woods was presumably at least a couple hundred miles from TPC Sawgrass when Players Championship contender Justin Rose was assessed and then awarded two shots for a penalty that a few hours later the PGA Tour decided was not a penalty after all.

But Woods, despite his injury-related absence, was, as always, part of the conversation after officials on Sunday morning unexpectedly rescinded the punishment Rose incurred when it appeared his ball moved after he addressed it late in Saturday’s third round. The ruling and its aftermath blew up on Twitter, with observers recalling a similar incident at last year’s BMW Championship involving the (still) world No. 1.

After a late Sunday rain delay, Martin Kaymer didn’t make things easy at The Players Championship, but the former No. 1 player in the world pulled it out at TPC Sawgrass to earn the biggest paycheck of his career. What once looked like a multi-shot victory was a breathless race to the finish and one-shot win over Jim Furyk in the darkness.

After winning the PGA Championship and getting to No. 1 in the world, Kaymer, who hits a sweet high fade, curiously tinkered with his swing, trying to hit a better draw to contend at venues like Augusta National. He tumbled down the world rankings, and barely factored on Tour in the last couple years. But he’s been steadily popping back up on the first page of leaderboards, and that culminated with this week’s resurgence at the game’s “fifth major.”

A little before 6 p.m. ET on Sunday at TPC Sawgrass, Martin Kaymer becoming the latest Players Champion looked like a formality. He held a three-shot lead over Jim Furyk, who had to make a nerve-wracking par putt on the 18th. Then the horn blew with thunder and lightning in the area, and played was halted for over an hour.

When it resumed, Kaymer seemed to lose the steady game that was about to make him a wire-to-wire winner from his Thursday course record matching opening round. After the lanky German cleaned up a par on the 14th hole, he pull-hooked his first tee shot since the delay. He’d follow that poor tee ball up with three more poor shots, and walked off the 15th green with a double bogey and his three-shot lead reduced to one.

Update 2: Martin Kaymer wins in a wild finish.

Update: Play resumed at 7:12 p.m. ET

Jordan Spieth is hitting a rough patch on Sunday again, relinquishing a front-nine lead and falling behind his playing partner by multiple shots as he makes the turn at The Players Championship. Spieth overtook sole possession of the lead with a smooth little birdie putt on the fourth hole at TPC Sawgrass, but he’s leaked some oil since that early stretch.

The 20-year-old is trying to become the youngest ever, by almost three years over Adam Scott in 2004, to win The Players. This comes just a month after he made that run to become the youngest ever to win the Masters. On that Sunday, he jumped ahead of Bubba Watson early on the front nine. Their positions changed dramatically, however, at the eighth and ninth holes at Augusta, a four-shot swing dropping Spieth into second, and Bubba would never look back.

The Players Championship is the most lucrative golf tournament in the world, and this year’s purse is even deeper. At the end of 2013, both the PGA Tour and PGA of America announced that they were pushing the total pot to $10 million at their marquee events. So The Players no longer has the solo distinction of being the richest purse in golf, but it still shares the title with the season’s fourth major.

The $10M purse is a $500k increase from last year, when The Players was far and away the richest game on Tour. Tiger Woods banked $1.7 million last year, and the 2014 winner will take home $1.8 million. While The Players and the PGA lead the way, the richest purses are increasing all over the schedule. The Masters added $1M more this year to its prize money total, paying $1.62 million of its new $9 million purse out to Bubba Watson. The WGC events, the Match Play, Cadillac Championship at Doral and Bridgestone Invitational, also now have $9M purses, doling out $1.53M to their winners (last year, the WGC purses were larger than all four majors, and slightly less than The Players). All these huge payout increases, of course, are largely due to the one guy absent this week, defending Players champion Tiger Woods.

TPC Sawgrass is a popular spot for turtles to take dramatic dives. The exact scene you’re about to see has happened before, and with a flip no less. But anyway, here’s Sunday’s GOLF TURTLE:

So yeah, the turtles are a bit of a thing. Enough that caddies have been enlisted to help out with their removal from the course. They’re too DANGEROUS:

New York Knicks shooting guard J.R. Smith has been down at The Players Championship all week, touring the grounds, doing interviews about his love for golf, and now tweeting from the tournament’s official account. Smith told Golf Digest this week that he’s played every day since the end of the NBA season, and he’s been a ubiquitous celebrity all weekend at TPC Sawgrass.

Now, the Tour decided to hand their marquee tournament’s Twitter account over to Smith, but it’s been pretty benign and clean so far.

UPDATE: Rain has caused a delay with just a few holes remaining at TPC Sawgrass. Martin Kaymer currently holds a comfortable lead. Click here for more.

The final pairing of Jordan Spieth and Martin Kaymer are now on the course at The Players Championship, but with some benign conditions so far, they’re not going to be able to rest on their current spot at 12-under. Both Spieth and Kaymer didn’t push the leading number higher on Saturday, hanging on through some windier conditions and tougher pin placements but still finishing three shots clear of everyone else.

A lot of weird things have happened at the island 17th hole at TPC Sawgrass, and there have been plenty of implosions and big numbers on the short little par-3. But Richard H. Lee bungled the iconic hole in way we’ve never seen before, taking two strokes that advanced his ball about a foot on the fringe.

Lee’s ball landed dry and safe on the island, but his adventures were just getting started. With the ball up against the cut of the fringe and the tiny sliver of rough at the edge of the island, Lee tried to move a wedge through the thick stuff and came over the top of it, just nicking the ball and barely moving it. He was then in a slightly better spot, but the taller grass was still going to prevent a pretty clean stroke through to the ball. That didn’t stop Lee from putting the wedge away and taking putter, and again he barely moved it. Here’s a gif of both strokes, via Adam Sarson.

Justin Rose started the third round at The Players Championship in a tie for fourth place. He walked off the 18th green one shot better than he started, at 7-under, and in a tie for 8th place. He’ll start his fourth round, however, at 5-under, seven shots off the pace and with little hope of catching Martin Kaymer and Jordan Spieth.

UPDATE! Citing a new rule, the PGA Tour rescinded the two-shot penalty Sunday morning just before Rose teed off. An explanation on their change of course below.

Some ideas are too grandiose and too feasible to simply go away, no matter how crazy they may actually be.

Such is the case with golf’s The Players Championship (or THE PLAYERS) and the notion that it could actually squeeze its way onto golf’s Mount Rushmore of major tournaments.

There are just 18 holes left in the PGA Tour’s biggest event, one more round to go for a potentially historic win at The Players Championship. Jordan Spieth is right back at it, playing in the Sunday final pairing at the season’s “fifth major” just one month after leading in the final round at the game’s most important major. Spieth would have been the youngest Masters winner ever, just edging Tiger Woods, and now he has a chance to take over as Players champion from the current world No. 1.

Unlike that slight edge over Tiger at Augusta, Spieth would be the youngest winner ever at TPC Sawgrass by nearly three years. Adam Scott, who burst onto the scene with his win in 2004, currently holds the distinction of being the youngest Players champion. Martin Kaymer will be out with Spieth again in the final pairing of the day, both sleeping on the 54-hole lead at 12-under and teeing off at 2:45 p.m. ET.

We’re 18 holes away from history at The Players Championship. It was just a month ago that Jordan Spieth held the lead on Sunday at the Masters, trying to become the youngest ever to win at Augusta. Now he’ll start Sunday’s final round sitting on a share of the lead with Martin Kaymer, trying to become the youngest ever to win the PGA Tour’s signature event.

Perhaps more impressive than anything to do with Spieth’s age is the current bogey-free stretch he’s put together. The 20-year-old has not made a bogey since the third round of the RBC Heritage, the tournament played one week after the Masters. It’s a 69-hole stretch at this point, an astounding feat given all the water trouble and increased penalties for inaccuracy at Pete Dye’s Stadium Course. There are definitely plenty of birdie chances, but it’s a setup that almost always penalizes a wayward drive, much more so than the regular stops on the modern PGA Tour. Somehow, Spieth has avoided all that through the first three days thanks to a mix of steady play tee-to-green and some ridiculous recovery work chipping and putting.

One month after holding the lead on Sunday at the Masters, 20-year-old Jordan Spieth is back in it at the game’s “fifth major,” The Players Championship. Spieth has played the first 54 holes at TPC Sawgrass without making a bogey, an astounding streak given all the water trouble and heightened penalties for inaccuracy at the Stadium Course. Dating back to the final round of the RBC Heritage, Spieth has now gone 69 holes on the PGA Tour without a bogey and he’ll go to sleep on a share of the 54-hole lead with Martin Kaymer.

Spieth didn’t light it up on Saturday and lost his swing at times on the back nine, but he always managed to recover and avoid dropping a shot. He opened the third round with 10 straight pars, missing a couple birdie chances on the front nine par-5s before finally rolling one in at the par-5 11th. That was his only red number of the day, but his playing partner wasn’t running away with anything and those saves would get him to the lead by the end of his round.

Jordan Spieth’s amazing bogey-free streak continues on Saturday at the Players Championship. The 20-year-old has yet to make a bogey this week through 48 holes. It’s an astounding stretch on a course where there’s so much water trouble and where almost every inaccurate shot is penalized.

Spieth opened his third round with 10 straight pars, missing a couple birdie chances at the par-5s but sticking with Martin Kaymer. He finally rolled one in to gain some ground on Kaymer at the par-5 11th hole. There was chatter Saturday morning that Spieth needs to convert this weekend, and stop just contending and making noise on the weekend at these major events.

Justin Rose had an interesting adventure up around the 11th green at TPC Sawgrass on Saturday. Rose was just off the edge of the putting surface, his ball settling up against the fringe and the high stuff of the first cut. As amateurs well know, that’s always a bit of an awkward play and it’s tough to get the putter blade through the thick stuff and then squarely on the ball for a nice stroke.

So Rose opted to chop down on it with the toe end of his putter. We’ve seen this before at Sawgrass. In 2001, Vijay Singh popped one onto the green with the toe of his putter and drained it at the 16th. This attempt from Rose, however, wasn’t quite as successful as that memorable Singh shot.

There are many quirky features on multiple holes at Pete Dye’s Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass. The island 17th green gets all the publicity, but there are so many other cool looks and shots. While it doesn’t affect play so much, the view of the 6th tee is one of the more unique looks on the PGA Tour.

That tree should never really come into play for these pros, who blast it out under the overhang and onto the fairway at this shorter par-4. But it’s not exactly a comfortable, wide-open feeling standing on the tee.

Adam Scott is making a run on the back nine at The Players Championship, draining three straight birdies to start his inward march and keep those hopes of becoming the new world No. 1 alive. That appeared to be a dead proposition at the start of Friday, after Scott fired an opening round 77 (only four players in the entire field were worse on Thursday). But the Aussie rebounded in the second round with score that was 10 shots better than his first loop. That was enough to make the cut on the number, and now he’s trying to work his way up the leaderboard on ’“moving day” at TPC Sawgrass.

The birdie streak on his Saturday back nine should have included an eagle, but last year’s Masters champ got a bit of bad luck on the lip of the 10th hole. From about 110 yards out, Scott lofted a wedge that landed on the fringe and immediately stated tracking towards the cup. It definitely looked like a hole-out eagle, but somehow rimmed out at the end:

As I noted yesterday, the annual stop at TPC Sawgrass is one of those weeks where a portion of the viewing audience can instantly identify or recall the holes. Many don’t have that total familiarity like they do with Augusta, but it has become the second most famous non-rotating venue on the PGA Tour.

Here are your pin placements for moving day. Most of you are probably interested in No. 17, which will be way up on the lower tier on the left side today.

The 17th at TPC Sawgrass is one of, if not the most exciting hole of the PGA Tour season. While it’s a raucous amphitheater-style setting, it does not match the madness and the party of the 16th at TPC Scottsdale. But on the golf side, it’s a much more entertaining hole with players’ nerves fully exposed on what should be an easy wedge shot from 135 to 140 yards.

So when you are able to stick one up on the green, and close to the pin, there’s not only an opportunity to exhale but also to strut a bit for the large crowd surrounding the hole. Late on Friday, when the crowd is its most hydrated, Luke Donald tucked one close and then celebrated with an homage to the star who sucked up all the oxygen in the sports world the previous night, Johnny Manziel (via PGATour.com).

With the conditions supposedly toughening up for the afternoon tee times, I said earlier today that I’d be shocked if Martin Kaymer (12-under) didn’t go to sleep on a mutli-shot 36-hole lead at The Players Championship. I guess I just underestimated Jordan Spieth yet again, as the 20-year-old continues to exceed expectations and is now just one shot back of Kaymer at 11-under in his first ever Players Championship.

It was just a month ago that Spieth contended in the final Sunday pairing in his first ever Masters, and he’s right back at it at TPC Sawgrass. Now he’ll be out in the final pairing again on Saturday, leading the field in scrambling, one-putts, and bogeys. The last stat is pretty simple to follow, because Spieth has not made a single bogey in 36 holes at the Stadium Course. That’s hard to believe, given all the water and increased accuracy that’s required here, but Spieth keeps pushing the boundaries in his first full season on the Tour.

The Players Championship draws some of the biggest golf crowds of the year. Pete Dye’s TPC Sawgrass layout is called the Stadium Course for a reason, as the setup is designed to accommodate large crowds with amphitheater-style seating around many of the holes.

But the crowd can also come into play, as we saw on Friday afternoon when Graeme McDowell’s golf ball ended up in a chair. That folding chair also happened to be occupied at the time, and a young man named Christian sat frozen while he waited for the Ulsterman to come find his ball and get a ruling from an official. Here’s the lie McDowell encountered when he got up around the 10th green:

Martin Kaymer is lapping the field at The Players Championship, backing up his course-record opening round of 63 with 69 on Friday to get in the clubhouse at 12-under. He’s five shots clear of Kevin Chappell and Russell Henley, and with the winds picking up a bit at TPC Sawgrass, it will be a shock if he doesn’t go to bed on the 36-hole lead.

Kaymer didn’t move through the Pete Dye layout flawlessly again, making two bogeys. But he did stay under par on each nine and extended the margin, so it was a second straight successful day at the season’s fifth major. His driving accuracy and GIR stats on Thursday were incredible, and those regressed significantly, but he managed to scramble through the tougher conditions for the 3-under round. Kaymer said he “kept himself in the tournament” (that’s a bit of an understatement) with two up-and-downs and managing to stay together in the wind and with tougher pin placements.