PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Florida — It’s been more than a decade since the Jacksonville area has had a colder winter.
TPC Sawgrass director of agronomy Jeff Plotts said he and his team were still able to get the Players Stadium Course “worthy of the best players in the world” for this week’s Players Championship.
Indeed, Plotts said there is a benefit to some cold weather for a March Players, as long as it doesn’t get too extreme. And the 18 nights of frost that he counted on the property during the winter — more than in the previous five years combined since he became the superintendent — helped keep the bermuda grass from growing and battling the winter rye for supremacy on the fairways and greens.
“The cold kind of helped suppress the bermuda and allowed the cool-season grass to come out stronger,” Plotts said. “All in all, everything is in good shape.”
The brilliant sunshine so far this week has only accentuated the deep emerald color of the playing surface and the weather forecast only gets better, with sunny days and temperatures in the 70s for Ponte Vedra Beach.
The last two champions put their seal of approval on the job Plotts and his staff did.
“The conditions out here this week are absolutely perfect,” said 2019 champion Rory McIlroy.
“The course is in as good of shape as any course I’ve ever played,” said Webb Simpson, the last man to win The Players in May, in 2018. “Really excited for this year’s tournament and the conditions we’re going to see.”
There isn’t much wind in the forecast, which Plotts said might render the course a bit tamer for the best field in golf.
“We were hoping for a little wind but the early forecast is for not a great deal,” he said. “We will get the typical afternoon breeze off the coast but I don’t see anything much above 10 mph.”
The conditions impressed PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, who made it a point to single out Plotts in his State of the Tour news conference on Tuesday.
“The Stadium Course is in peak condition, thanks to Jeff and his team,” Monahan said. “They have worked tirelessly to prepare for this championship.”
Plotts and his staff were on their way to pretty much the same thing last year before the tournament was canceled after one round.
“We were really primed to give those guys the best golf course conditions they had ever played here,” Plotts said. “It was really a shame.”
It appears the weather will be much the same as the days the tournament missed last year, except a bit cooler.
Advance rules official Stephen Cox said the philosophy of keeping the rough at 3 inches or less — as it was in the May era from 2007-2018 — remains intact this year, which officially is the second Players in March.
When the tournament was in March from 1982-2006, the rough frequently topped out at 5 inches, leaving players little choice but to play the balls out somewhere in the fairway.
Reaching the green? Nearly impossible.
“It’s a slightly different strategy now,” he said. “As opposed to guys having to hack it out, we want to allow them to have options. They may not be able to control the ball flight, but they can get a club on it.”
The result is that the scoring average of 71.513 in 2019 wasn’t appreciably different from the 71.409 in May of 2018, which ended a streak of seven years in a row in which the field averaged over-par.
In six of seven Players Championships from 1995 to 2002, the field averaged higher than 73 strokes, capped by the 1999 tournament that David Duval won at 3-under (the highest score for a winner at the Stadium Course), with the field scoring average at 74.672.
There have been very few cosmetic changes to the golf course since 2020. The only one that players might notice is on the Island Green at No. 17. The green was resurfaced during the summer for improved drainage.
“We’ve got things flowing off the green better,” Plotts said. “The green is in excellent shape.”