We had finished the tour of the spectacular new clubhouse at TPC Sawgrass, or so we thought, when we left the PGA Tour players’ sanctuary and turned down a nondescript staircase and walked toward the basement.
Club pro Matt Borocz had shown us the champions’ locker room, had given us our assigned lockers for the day – complete with our names engraved on a small plaque –and had led us into the sumptuous Tour Players’ Lounge, where we could picture Tiger Woods, Ernie Els, Jim Furyk and company relaxing before their tee times.
Now we were walking through the building’s underbelly, past storerooms and the caddies’ lounge, when Borocz explained that this was the path the players took (the walk of champions) to the first tee. Suddenly the clubhouse had less of the feel of a museum and more of the aura of The Players Championship, golf’s fifth major.
We looked left and right and saw black-and-white, poster-size photos of previous winners celebrating. We could just about hear the crowd roaring its approval of Hal Sutton, Greg Norman, Davis Love III, and all the others. Just before we reached the end of the hall, we saw the sign: “Through this tunnel pass the greatest golfers in the world, competing for the right to be called ‘The Players Champion’.”
As we hit the door, it was easy to imagine striding out as the final-round leader en route to the driving range, with pumped-up crowds lining our every step. Welcome to the “PGA Tour Experience.”
Before you go to the 1st tee, take your rusty game to the Tour Academy, where head instructor Todd Jones provides a critique and video analysis, using his telestrator to draw a box around your head. As the tape of your swing plays, he carefully watches the move, all the while advising you to “Keep your head in the box!” He then offers a setup tip and a succinct swing thought to improve your balance, to wit: attempt to hold your balance on the follow-through, much as a gymnast tries to “stick” a dismount. (Note to self: forget keeping your head in the box until you practice it a lot)
Now it’s off to your personal hitting station at the driving range, again complete with your name emblazoned on the club stand. Your caddie awaits, with your name on his bib (of course!), and he will be with you throughout the practice session and the round.
Need a distance to one of the flags on the range? Is your five-iron a bit dirty after a few swings? No problem. Brian Bateman, your caddie, is quick with information and assistance. As you prepare, Bateman is also getting to know a little bit about you and your game, setting your nerves at ease, trying to make the day as memorable as you hoped it would be.
Bateman, no relation to the Tour player with the same name, has caddied for star players Vijay Singh and Stuart Appleby and celebrities such as President Clinton, and he also trains those who try out to be caddies. The task is much more demanding than it appears – surprisingly few make the grade.
“At Pebble Beach or Pinehurst, a caddie will carry your bag, wipe your clubs, and tell you there is a four-inch break on a putt,” said TPC Sawgrass general manager Bill Hughes. “Here they will tell you where Hale Irwin hit the shot that he holed out from the fairway. That’s where I think we separate ourselves from the others.”
What sets The Players apart is that it is the players’ championship. Golf’s four major events (Masters, U.S. Open, British Open, PGA) are all administered by other organizations; the PGA is run by the Professional Golfers’ Association of America, not the PGA Tour.
The PGA Tour Experience was launched shortly after Phil Mickelson won The Players Championship in May. Its objective is not simply to simply allow an average golfer to walk in the footsteps of Mickelson, Woods, Singh, and every other top male golfer in the world; it is also the opportunity to enjoy the inherent treatment such top-level players receive.
“Our goal is to take the PGA Tour and bring it to life for everyone,” said Billy Dettlaff, National Director of the TPC network and the keeper of the tournament’s history.
The Players is the first event played on a course the Tour owns, and it has been played at TPC Sawgrass since former tour commissioner Deane Beman and legendary designer Pete Dye carved it out of swampland south of Jacksonville in 1980. When you tour the clubhouse, you can even see the ball that Beman struck to christen the course’s construction.
Amazing as it may seem today, when Beman embarked on this project, many thought him a bit crazy. The tour didn’t own any golf courses, and the sleepy area where he planned to build seemed an unlikely place for the Tour to call home.
“It’s our first course, and our flagship,” said Dettlaff, who now oversees 23 courses within the TPC network, with more on the way. “It’s been here 27 years, and the history is baked into it.”
After the 2006 event, however, the tour decided to execute an extreme makeover. The clubhouse was worn and outdated, and the course had softened and no longer played the way Dye and Beman envisioned it. Helped by an additional two months with the event’s move from March to May on the Tour calendar, they rebuilt the entire property in time for the 2007 playing.
Borocz talked of radioing the construction crew, at 4 p.m. on April 2, 2006, to tell them that the final group had just putted out on the first hole. The crews descended, and didn’t stop until they had removed 24,000 tons of topsoil, laid an equivalent amount of sand (enough to fill a seven-mile line of dump trucks) and 60 acres of grass, and installed a state-of-the-art, SubAir irrigation system (the same as used at Augusta National) to help the greens drain even in a Florida gully washer. The course is firm and fast again, as Dye and Beman intended it to play.
“They said it couldn’t be done,” said Hughes. “We did it in 14 months, from demolition to completion.”
The 77,000 square foot clubhouse is 40 percent larger than the White House, and it is also acts as resort, tour meeting place, and museum. Its Mediterranean Revival style evokes old Florida, when men such as railroad baron Henry Flagler built hotels that mimicked those they had seen in Europe.
The halls are filled with artifacts of the tournament and the course, including a club donated by each winner, a cocktail napkin with an early concept sketch of the course’s back nine, and huge murals of memorable events, such as 1982 champion Jerry Pate sending Beman and Dye into the lake at the awards ceremony, then joining them.
Nameplates in the main locker room attest that, indeed, this is not just the host course for one of the year’s most important PGA Tour events, but also the home club for more than 30 tour pros, including stars such as Singh, Furyk, and 2005 champion Fred Funk.
The players’ sanctuary, which has become ours for the day, also features a plush lounge, with several flat-screen TVs and an entire wall of photos that includes the current major champions and the United States squads for the most recent Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup.
A highlight was a peek inside the champions’ locker room, reserved for winners of The Players. The first berth on the left belongs to Jack Nicklaus, who won the event three of the first five times it was contested (1974, 1976, 1978), and the lockers carry the names of most of the top players of the past three decades: Trevino, Floyd, Norman, Price, Couples, Sutton, Kite, Love, Woods, Scott, and Mickelson.
You needn’t play the course to come in and peruse the displays and gape at the massive clubhouse. Dettlaff has assembled a staff of docents to help people find their way and interpret the displays. The mounted golf clubs show how, even in less than 30 years, technology has taken over the game.
One phenomenon even TPC staffers have a difficult time explaining is the par-3 17th hole, with its famous island green. A miniature replica of the green was set up at Rockefeller Center the week of The Players for passersby to try to hit. The “Road Hole” has probably become no less than the third most famous hole in golf, after the 18th at Pebble Beach and No. 17 at St. Andrews – and that fame has brought some surprising requests.
“We have had marriage proposals on that green,” said Hughes. “We have had a half-dozen people seek permission to spread a loved one’s ashes. I don’t know what that thing is out there. It’s a cultural phenomenon.”
People begin staking out spots around the lake at Nos. 16 and 17 around 7 a.m. during the tournament – a full 10 hours before the leaders arrive – and roughly 35,000 can watch the play there. When we played it, only shells of the tournament grandstand were left.
As we played, Bateman shared tales about Singh, Stuart Appleby, Funk, and colorful Englishman Ian Poulter, offered continuous encouragement and suggestions, and also pointed out where Dye tweaked the course during its facelift – what the Tour refers to as “competitive enhancements.”
For example, the mounds off the right side of the 14th hole had become something of a chute for players’ drives, providing a kick forward and toward the middle of the fairway on the demanding par 4. Dye revamped that area, adding additional smaller mounds and lengthening the rough, making it far more likely that a ball would hang up and leave an uneven lie for the second shot.
Dye may call them small alterations, but I call them huge as I hit my drive where the devil Dye put those “competitive enhancements”. My ball found the side of one of those mounds and came to rest in deep rough. I was about 185 yards from the green and could only attempt a wedge shot. The club passed almost completely under the ball, moving it only about 15 yards and still in the rough. A second attempt propelled the ball onto the fairway about 150 yards from the green. (Note to self: Get voodoo doll of Pete Dye.)
Playing fifteen gave me time to shake off the disaster at fourteen and to anticipate playing the famous last three holes at TPC Sawgrass –with seventeen being the most anticipated golf shot maybe in all of golf. The hole’s island green sits a mere 140 yards from the tee. The green is larger than you might think, and yet 140,000 balls per year are pulled from the lake surrounding this green.
Determined not to contribute to the club’s collection of balls, I focus in and actually hit it within ten feet of the pin. My birdie putt skimmed the right edge, and I tap-in for par. A little aloe for the wound I received on fourteen.
Of course, the luxury of being treated like a Tour player has its price. It costs $1,295 per person, double occupancy in summer and shoulder seasons, $1,455 in fall and winter. This “Day of a Lifetime” starts with the booking of a Tour Experience room at the Sawgrass Marriott (you must be a guest of the hotel or a member of the PGA Tour Network in order to play TPC Sawgrass). Room amenities include all the expected keepsakes (bag tag, money clip, golf shirt and towel), plus “value passes” to the Spa at Sawgrass, golf shop, and the Augustine Grille at the Marriott.
At the TPC, you receive locker room privileges, instruction, first-tee introduction, and lunch in the member dining area, along with a “storytellers’ guide” to the course to recapture the moments.
If you want to take your shot at the island green but can’t swing the Tour Experience fee, the Stadium Course Stay-and-Play package (starting at $599 for two players, double occupancy) includes room, breakfast, 18 holes, forecaddie, commemorative pouch, and use of the practice area.
Now we were walking through the building’s underbelly, past storerooms and the caddies’ lounge, when Borocz explained that this was the path the players took (the walk of champions) to the first tee. Suddenly the clubhouse had less of the feel of a museum and more of the aura of The Players Championship, golf’s fifth major.
Borocz talked of radioing the construction crew, at 4 p.m. on April 2, 2006, to tell them that the final group had just putted out on the first hole. The crews descended, and didn’t stop until they had removed 24,000 tons of topsoil, laid an equivalent amount of sand (enough to fill a seven-mile line of dump trucks) and 60 acres of grass, and installed a state-of-the-art, SubAir irrigation system (the same as used at Augusta National) to help the greens drain even in a Florida gully washer. The course is firm and fast again, as Dye and Beman intended it to play.