The Players Championship 2015: Leaderboard, live coverage, results and more from Sunday’s final round at TPC Sawgrass

The exuberant fist pump and huge roar from the crowd at TPC Sawgrass were vintage Tiger Woods.

“It felt good,” a cheerful Woods said after draining a clutch putt on his 18th hole of the day. “I hit a really good putt there.”

Billy Horschel could have had a chance down the stretch at The Players Championship but for an old lady with a camera.

That’s what the 2014 FedEx Cup champion would have you believe, anyway. Horschel blamed a woman taking a photo of him during his takeaway on the 10th tee for a wayward shot that led to the second of three consecutive bogeys and a T13 finish at TPC Sawgrass.

Ted Bishop just can’t help embarrassing himself when it comes to Ian Poulter and social media.

Bishop, who was ousted from his position as president of the PGA of America in October after posting a tweet calling Poulter a “lil girl,” was back at it Sunday night following Rickie Fowler’s Players Championship victory.

Sergio Garcia expected TPC Sawgrass fans to cheer for his popular Players Championship rival, Rickie Fowler, during their playoff with little-known Kevin Kisner. And the 2008 Players champion has weathered his fair share of razzing -- like the cheers that greeted his double dunk at the par-3 17th after his earlier run-in with Tiger Woods at TPC Sawgrass in 2013.

But even though the heckling aimed at the 35-year-old Spaniard was louder and nastier than any of the good-natured taunting fans dish out on the notoriously boisterous 16th hole at the Phoenix Open, Garcia played down the fan misbehavior during Fowler’s dramatic overtime win.

Rickie Fowler got to spend some of Mother’s Day with his mom, Lynne, on Sunday but she needed an unplanned dash back from the airport in order to be there for the end of the best day of his career.

Fowler played well all week at The Players, but his Sunday round had stalled out on a crowded leaderboard. He spent much of his day out of view of the NBC cameras, just playing out the final round several shots back from the lead. So with Rickie five shots back and just an hour or so left in his round, his mom and his sister decided to head to the airport and catch a scheduled commercial flight out of town (via Jason Sobel/ESPN):

Rickie Fowler started the week being voted as the “most overrated” player on the PGA Tour in an anonymous poll of his peers in SI. He finished it with the biggest win of his career against a field that’s reputed as the deepest of the PGA Tour season.

When asked if the poll motivated him this week, he said “Nah, I laughed at the poll ...” and then dropped this hammer.

Rickie Fowler put to rest that “overrated” label when he rode a record-tying 6-under incoming nine holes in regulation on Sunday to a playoff win to steal The Players Championship title from Sergio Garcia and Kevin Kisner.

A birdie on the fourth extra hole -- the sudden-death portion after an aggregate three-hole playoff -- sealed Fowler’s first Players Championship and second PGA Tour win.

The Players Championship sputtered for much of the weekend, a tight leaderboard with only a few big moves that you were just hoping might yield a dramatic finish late on Sunday. It delivered, with one historic charge from Rickie Fowler, some career putting from Sergio Garcia, and some deadly consistent form from Kevin Kisner, playing in the Sunday final pairing.

The trio went to the first ever three-hole aggregate playoff and just the fifth playoff in Players history (four of them coming at TPC Sawgrass). With the sun setting at TPC Sawgrass, all three players continued to play almost flawless golf from tee-to-green. Kisner and Fowler both birdied the 17th hole, with Rickie igniting the crowd by sticking it to just a few feet from a tucked pin placement.

The Players Championship is often called the “fifth major” in golf. A win does not count as a major on a player’s resume, but the PGA Tour does everything it can to ensure it’s the most prestigious tournament in the world outside of those first four. The purse is the richest, the course is a non-rotating staple, and the field is the deepest in golf. The pros refer to it as “our championship.”

The PGA Tour does not have the rights or control of any of the majors, so this is their marquee event. The event and the course have their critics, who say it’s over-promoted, overpraised, and will never count as a major championship. But it’s a unique test that always features the biggest names in the game, and this year is no different.

The three-man playoff at The Players Championship definitely has a fan-favorite, and Rickie Fowler ignited the massive Stadium Course crowd at the island hole with this dart into the island green.

This is what he encountered on his way up to the green:

Rickie Fowler just had the best finish in the history of The Players Championship, needing just 11 strokes to play the final four holes and playing the last six holes in 6-under. He lit up the grounds at TPC Sawgrass as everyone scrambled to catch up and follow his finish. Now he’s headed to an extra hole playoff to decide it and even the local wildlife want in.

The Players golf squirrel earns points for his efforts, but we’re still partial to Sammy, the USA’s unofficial mascot at the Presidents Cup.

Ask Sergio Garcia himself and he’ll tell you he was completely lost on the greens coming into The Players Championship. He started the week with three putters but snapped one over his leg and threw it in a trash can on Friday. He’s also used two different putting grips IN tournament play. So it’s been startling to watch him roll them in through most of the final round, including a bomb on the 17th when he needed it most.

The birdie pulled him even with Rickie Fowler, who is already in the clubhouse at 12-under following his historic finish.

That laser from Rickie Fowler might serve as the fulcrum of what may go down as the best finish ever at The Players Championship. Standing 240 yards out in the fairway, Fowler smoked a fairway metal to just two-feet for a tap-in eagle that rocketed him just one shot off the lead.

The eagle came in the middle of a 6-under in a six-hole stretch that was one of the most memorable streaks in recent PGA Tour seasons.

A familiar face has shot to the top of the leaderboard at The Players. Sergio Garcia’s struggles at the major championships are well-documented, but he always seems to be on the first page of the leaderboard at The Players. He’s contended at the majors too, but the difference at TPC Sawgrass is that he’s already pocketed a Players title. Now he just needs to get everyone else to buy into that “fifth major” hype and make it count as much as the four others.

TPC Sawgrass suits Sergio’s strengths. It’s a course that requires a player to move the ball both ways, both off the tee and with irons on approach. Garcia is among the best ball-strikers in the world and never has much of a problem playing a clean round in those areas.

Adam Scott has until next year to bench his broomstick putter, but after an ugly three-putt from three feet at The Players Championship in Sunday’s finale, he might want to go back to the shorty he used briefly earlier this season before the Jan. 1, 2016, anchored putting ban.

Scott arrived at Augusta National last month with his long putter in the bag and said the Masters was no place to experiment with the conventional-length flat stick he had maneuvered to mixed results during the Florida Swing. The anchored stroke did well by him in Saturday’s third round, during which he made three straight birdies after making the turn.

The PGA Tour does not operate or control any of the four majors, so The Players is their baby. They do everything they can to push and promote it as the game’s “fifth major” and one of the big ways they try to achieve that status is having the richest purse in golf.

The Players has been the most lucrative single event on the PGA Tour for several years now, but a 2013 announcement the PGA Tour made in conjunction with the PGA of America set off an arms race of sorts. In that press conference, Tim Finchem of the Tour and Ted Bishop of the PGA of America announced together that they were moving the purse of their organizations’ marquee events to $10 million. It was a dramatic increase, and one that, for the PGA Championship, zoomed it past the Masters. U.S. Open, and Open Championship.

Many of the golfers at The Players are wearing pink in one form or another for Mother’s Day. Tiger Woods went for his traditional red and black, but one other player who has a steadfast Sunday tradition decided to switch it up.

Rickie Fowler, proud Oklahoma State product, is most identified for his Sunday orange. But Rickie has no orange in his entire Sunday getup, shunning the Cowboys in favor of Mom.

Tiger Woods zipped through an inconsequential final round at The Players Championship in the recent form we’ve come to expect from the 14-time major winner. There were a few nice shots that set up birdies, some impressive scrambling and the constant struggle to keep the ball in play off the tee.

Tiger’s alignment was a mess this week, and he repeatedly aimed left and lost the ball left -- his cut shots failing to cut, and a rare attempted draw just completely overcooking and hooking into the trees. While he settled near the bottom of the leaderboard all weekend, the scorecards didn’t even tell the full story of just how much of a grind it was for Woods. The shakiness off the tee continued right out of the gate on Sunday. He hit a ball so far left on the fifth hole that it landed in an area that wasn’t really conceived as a part of the hole. It was probably the farthest drive left at that hole all week, but it settled in a spot that had been trampled down by the crowd and with a relatively open angle to the green. He made a par but the card didn’t reflect how ugly that first swing was.

John Daly, perhaps giving voice to fears about his own faded PGA Tour career, believes two old race horses battling for their PGA Tour careers -- Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson -- have not crossed their last finish lines.

“Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods aren’t done yet,” Daly said on CSNChicago.com on Friday before serving beers at U.S. Cellular Field in lieu of throwing the ceremonial first pitch when the game was rained out. “I’ve seen both regiments and they’re both beautiful human beings. They both are artists and they both practice really hard like I do.”

With the USGA bolting to FOX and taking the U.S. Open with them, The Players Championship is now the marquee tournament on NBC. The network always covered it as a major championship, expanding the normal broadcast window, assigning its best talent, and using all their special bells and whistles, especially at the island 17th hole. But after that controversial bidding war over the U.S. Open, NBC was left with the Players and Ryder Cup as their two biggest golf properties. It’s not a Ryder Cup year, so they’re desperately hoping for some drama late on Sunday at TPC Sawgrass.

Even though this is NBC’s biggest golf event of the year, oddly, there’s actually less golf televised than last year. The weekend rounds of PGA Tour events almost always feature early coverage on Golf Channel followed by late afternoon conclusions on the networks, either CBS or NBC. But this week, there’s no third or fourth round broadcast on Golf Channel, which is running their “Live From” pregame show up until the 2 p.m. NBC broadcast. It’s an odd cutdown in the coverage for such a big event, and with Tiger Woods playing early in the day both weekend rounds, that normal early broadcast would have been useful and rated comparably well.

Those hoping to see a big-name player continue his run of dominance at the Players Championship on Sunday may be out of luck. Golf’s best are all several strokes out of contention at TPC Sawgrass through 54 holes. Those simply hoping for a fun finish, however, should make sure to tune in.

Thirty players are within five shots of leader Chris Kirk heading into the final day, breaking the tournament record of 20 set in 1982. Kirk will have to work hard to fend off competitors gunning for his lead, but the Georgia product is well-suited for the Bermuda grass. He made three straight birdies late in the day to break what was then a six-way tie for first place.

The Players Championship is as wide open as it’s ever been with 30 players within five shots of the leader (the previous mark was 20 players back in 1982). Chris Kirk is the 54-hole pacesetter at 10-under, so he’ll anchor the tee sheet on Sunday afternoon at TPC Sawgrass. But the reality is that there will be multiple players who probably hold the lead or a share of the lead throughout Sunday, and they may come from waaayyy down the tee sheet because of this clustered leaderboard.

Tiger Woods said on Friday night that he felt anyone who made the cut still had a chance to win. With 18 fewer holes to work with, about half of the remaining field is still in play and going to bed thinking they have a chance. It’s likely the scoring conditions are a bit more difficult on Sunday, but the third round showed that a precise tee-to-green game and a hot putter can lead to a huge jump up the leaderboard.

The Players Championship heads to Sunday’s final round with the most clustered leaderboard in its history, by a wide margin. There are 30 players within five shots of the lead, currently held by Chris Kirk at 10-under. There were 20 within five shots in 1982, but this year’s bunched-up board obliterates that mark.

The leaderboard is populated with many young players from the southeastern United States who are used to playing on this Bermuda grass. Kirk is a Georgia product and may be tough to overtake on Sunday. He’s won on Tour three times before, nearly won the FedExCup last year, and probably should have been on the USA Ryder Cup team. Kirk made three straight birdies from Nos. 15-17 to make a late move and break a six-way tie (at the time).