The Players Championship 2015: Leaderboard, live updates, scores from Friday at TPC Sawgrass

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.

Ian Poulter has been known to let his frustrations get the better of him on the golf course. Friday at The Players Championship, the European Ryder Cup star went a bit barmy on a TPC Sawgrass track that has given him fits in the past.

Not much was happening for Poulter, who started his second round on the 10th hole and made three straight pars out of the gate. Things began to get somewhat squirrely for the Englishman on the par-3 13th, when, at 1-under for the tournament, he missed a nine-footer for birdie that the Americans might have conceded in that biennial event at which Poulter excels.

Only one half of the the “next great rivalry” in golf showed up this week at The Players Championship. Rory McIlroy, the world No. 1, will hit the midpoint at TPC Sawgrass at 4-under and just outside the top 10. Jordan Spieth is headed home after his worst start of this breakout season.

McIlroy started his second round in a bit of sloppy form, giving away birdie chances and dropping a shot at the par-4 6th. But he turned it on and showed the talent that makes him the clear-cut No. 1 in the world. When using his driver, which is not often around TPC Sawgrass, he bombed it down the center. Three birdies in a four-hole stretch pushed him up inside the top five and within striking distance of leader Kevin Na, who got in the clubhouse early at 8-under. McIlroy’s distance sets up an array of short iron shots that many players don’t get to take, and he was dialed-in during the middle of his round. This approach to a few feet at the 12th left almost no work for his putter:

Matt Kuchar was incredibly fortunate his golf ball did not plummet off the island and into the water at TPC Sawgrass’ 17th hole.

That break, however, came with a cost when Kuchar’s ball nestled up against the hazard line. This lie would have been just fine for his playing partner, left-handed Bubba Watson, but Kuchar had no stance. So he got creative.

We’ve seen a lot of funky bounces and odd ways to play the most famous par-3 on the PGA Tour, but Will MacKenzie’s path to posting a 3 took it to a new level.

Playing to a back left pin location, MacKenzie sent his ball just wide of the green. Fortunately, he hit the wooden bulkhead surrounding the grass and caught a bounce directly down the narrow bridge across to the green. It was an extremely lucky kick, but he was still put in an impossible position -- the ball buried in thick stuff with almost nowhere to land an extremely delicate shot.

Jonas Blixt yanked his drive at the TPC Sawgrass’ 18th hole so badly that NBC’s Johnny Miller said it “set a new record for left.” It started over the water and hooked hard and plunged into the middle of the drink.

It was such a horrible shot that Blixt decided he’d had just about enough of the club and launched it into that famous lake. Those are two generous donations.

Pete Dye’s Stadium Course has historically brutalized some of the biggest names in the game. World No. 1 Rory McIlroy said he is just now starting to like the place after several missed cuts and horrendous rounds. Bubba Watson has said he and the course just don’t get along. It’s one of the places on Tiger Woods’ annual schedule that has not been particularly friendly to him. He has two wins but also a whole lot of mediocre-to-bad results -- nothing like his regular stops at Torrey Pines, Doral, Bay Hill, or Firestone. Phil Mickelson also has a win, but aside from that 2007 edition, he’s rarely in contention and often missing the cut.

Those are some of the most decorated players in the history of the game, and they’ve all had trouble figuring out a consistent approach at TPC Sawgrass.

It was déjà vu all over again for Tiger Woods at TPC Sawgrass on Friday, as the two-time Players champion followed up his roller-coaster opening round with another up-and-down effort that had him flirting with the cut line much of the day.

Woods, who appears to have put the chipping yips well behind him in his second start since a two-month layoff, can’t seem to find any consistency off the tee and with some of his long irons. Should he miss his first cut in 16 starts at The Players (he ended his second round at 1-under 71 and even-par for the week, right on the projected cut line), he can blame a case of the lefts.

Tiger Woods needed a birdie on his last hole to get to even-par for The Players Championship. The cut line for the entire day has sat at even-par. So this was a make/miss to get to the weekend, and Woods buried it in the center of the cup from nine feet.

★★★

Welcome to Duval County, where raccoons roam the golf course during broad daylight at a crowded tournament. Robert Allenby has been through enough this year -- he wasn’t going to mess around and quickly yielded the way for golf raccoon.

★★★

UPDATE: Tiger buried a must-make birdie putt from nine feet on his final green, putting him back at even-par and juuust inside the cut line at the time.

We knew it would not always be pretty for Tiger Woods this week at The Players Championship, a place that’s not been the friendliest throughout his career. The 14-time major winner is still working out a series of “fresh” swing tweaks under consultant Chris Como and he’s been all over the place with his long game. These first 27 holes have been much of the same we’ve seen from Tiger in the Sean Foley era -- a constant up-and-down grind just to keep the ball in play and stick around even-par.

Rickie Fowler, days after Golf.com unveiled a poll of PGA Tour players who, under the cloak of anonymity, ranked him and Ian Poulter as the most overrated golfers, was dismissed by Rory McIlroy as just another coulda-been rival.

“Last year it was Rickie, this year it’s Jordan,” McIlroy said earlier this week about all the guys pundits have expected to give him a run for his money but have fallen a dollar short in each instance. “Might be someone else. Could have been Tiger.”

In a career overflowing with achievements, one of the most remarkable turns may be how Tiger Woods has recovered the ability to hit wedges in the last couple months. It looked hopeless back in February -- he was crippled standing over the most basic shots in the game. The word “yips” was used most to describe whatever was going on with the 14-time major winner.

Then he came back at Augusta, a place that leaves no margin for error on those shots, and it was as if nothing had happened. He made every shot he needed to and wasn’t using a putter or 4-iron from just off the green.

Golf nerds who tune into the PGA Tour regularly will tell you that ProTracer is one of the best things to happen to the way golf is broadcast on TV. It’s a perfect way to show just how inadequate you are at hitting the same shots, or illustrate some of the ugliest shots from the best players in the world.

So it was particularly cool to see the PGA Tour and Golf Channel mash up every single tee shot at the par-3 17th from Thursday’s first round at The Players. The wind was up and 21 balls plunged into the water -- all of them short of that front pin location. Fortunately for Brooks Koepka, who put two in the drink on his way to a quadruple bogey, the GIF didn’t trace balls from the drop zone.

At the start of the opening round on Thursday at The Players Championship, all the hype focused on the return of Tiger Woods and the power pairing of Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth. Those three big names, especially the two young guns at 1-2 in the world rankings, correctly made this one of the more anticipated Players. But by Thursday night, it was only world No. 1 Rory anywhere near the top of the leaderboard.

They’re all chasing Hideki Matsuyama, David Hearn, Kevin Na and Charley Hoffman, who posted 5-under rounds of 67. While Spieth and Rory get all the pub, Matsuyama is another young player that could pile up PGA Tour wins for the next couple decades. The 23-year-old phenom from Japan is probably a better ball striker than both McIlroy and Spieth, and has been on the first page of the leaderboard at majors several times in his early 20s.

Head down, slumped shoulders and air-swinging his 9-iron as he followed a flailed tee shot, Tiger Woods’ walk down the 13th fairway pretty much summed up the opening round 73 he carded Thursday at The Players Championship.

“I believe that picture right there speaks for itself,” former Woods rival David Duval said during Golf Channel’s broadcast from TPC Sawgrass.

The PGA Tour paired Jordan Spieth and Rory McIlroy at the Players this week in what was billed as the start of golf’s rivalry of the century. Golf Channel’s Brandel Chamblee said earlier in the week that we may be on the cusp of the greatest rivalry in the history of the game.

After McIlroy’s two majors last summer solidified his status as the game’s top talent, the rivalry narrative started to crescendo this last month when Spieth joined the battle with that record-setting Masters win. Spieth, who is four years younger than Rory, has been the hottest player in the world since the end of November and is now ranked No. 2 in the world. So the PGA Tour obliged and put the two together this week, and the golf world was salivating.