Professional golf”s so-called fifth major, the Players Championship, plays to its conclusion this Sunday at the Tournament Players Club at Sawgrass in northern Florida. The TPC at Sawgrass ia a Pete Dye-designed golf course that is best known to the viewing public as the golf course with the island green on its 17th hole. There”s a lot of money at stake as well as some amount of golfing prestige. However, please don”t mistake the Players Championship for the Masters, the United States Open, the British Open or the PGA Championship.
The Players Championship had its inaugural run in 1974. Jack Nicklaus won the first Players over J.C. Snead. For a short period of time the Players rotated sites. Nicklaus won at Atlanta County Club, Al Geiberger prevailed at Colonial in Fort Worth, Nicklaus won a second title at Inverrary in Florida, and Mark Hays took home the Players crown at Sawgrass Country Club.
In the late 1970s, then PGA Tour commissioner Deane Beman developed a dual-edged concept. He wanted the Tour to have its own championship of note and he also wanted the Tour to get into the business of owning and operating golf facilities. Beman, a former PGA Tour member who won the U.S. Amateur and the British Amateur as well as four tour events, had made a bundle of money running insurance agencies and had a great business sense. He anticipated the golfing boom and he wanted to diversity the Tour”s assets.
Beman purchased the 415 acres that the TPC would be built on for a mere $1. It was swampland. The success of the TPC at Sawgrass led to other ventures, and with an array of TPC courses throughout the country, the PGA Tour could schedule its events on its own course and save the high rental fees that were being charged by the host country clubs.
The very first Players Championship to be played at the new TPC at Sawgrass was contested in 1982. Jerry Pate, the 1976 U.S. Open champ, was the winner over Brad Bryant and Scott Simpson. The field included the top 125 money winners as well as a heavy contingent of invited European Tour stars. As time went on, the championship trophy started to include the names of big-time golfers such as Hal Sutton, Freddie Couples, Calvin Peete, Sandy Lyle, Tom Kite, Davis Love III, Nick Price and Greg Norman. The difficult nature of the course and the largeness of the purse plus the Players early-season time slot just two weeks before the Masters made the event must-see television.
Nonetheless, the Players is not in the same league as golf”s four majors. Sure, it carries more prestige than the Quad Cities and the Greater Milwaukee Open, but it”s still one level below the grand slam events. A recent calendar change to mid-May was done with the idea of playing it midway between the Masters and the U.S. Open, but that still doesn”t make it an equal to those four big events.
Want more proof? Tiger Woods, the world”s No. 1 players and the poster boy for all that is big time about golf, had knee surgery several days after the Masters. Woods will need to recuperate and rehab the knee for a few more weeks. When it came time to schedule his surgery, Woods made sure that going under the scope wouldn”t force him to miss any of the grand slam events.
Instead, Woods will miss the Players Championship, the fifth major. There are only four major championships in golf and there really isn”t room for another one. I don”t think any of golf”s top guns would ever contemplate missing a major, but they can justify skipping the Players.
Locally, the 12th annual Lake County Three Person Scramble tees it up next weekend (May 17-18) at Buckingham Golf and Country Club. Juan Lopez of Finley, Craig Kinser of Lakeport and John Seed of Sea Ranch are the defending champions. The Lopez-Kinser-Seed trio also won previous Three Man titles in 2002, 2003 and 2004.
There are also senior, net and senior net divisions at the Three Man. Last year, the father-son teams of Bob Borghesani, Mark Borghesani and Paul Borghesani captured the net division of the Three Man. Jack Winter, Frank Barthelmess and Ken Kearse won the senior title, and Larry Bresso, Jeff Markham and Rod Weiper prevailed in the senior net category.
On the junior golf front, Doug Quinones of Middletown High School as well as Kelseyville High School teammates Nick Schaefer and Jonathan Bridges advanced out of the North Coast Section Championships last Monday at Rooster Run Golf Club in Petaluma. This Monday they”ll be in the East Bay town of Hercules competing in the Tournament of Champions at Franklin Canyon Country Club.
Should any of the Lake County golfers finish in the top four at Franklin Canyon, they will qualify for the NorCals the following week at nearby Richmond Country Club. On Sunday, Doug, Nick, Jonathan and Ty Cazet of Rincon Valley Christian have a 2 p.m. practice round scheduled at Franklin Canyon in preparation for the TOC the following day.
Last weekend, Cazet played a practice round at Rooster Run with Douglas Greene of Point Arena High School and his coach John Seed. Cazet made a hole-in-one on the 15th hole. He used a pitching wedge on the 130-yard par-3 and parlayed that into his successful qualifying round last Monday.
Spring is in full bloom on the links. You can tell by the birdies and the holes-in-ones.
