Negotiating the perils of the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass during The Players Championship is almost more about where not to hit the ball than where to hit it.
When the ball came off Davis Love III’s long iron shot into the par-3 eighth hole in the final round of the 1992 Players, he knew it was going somewhere it shouldn’t — long and right, in the second cut of thick rough, with the pin cut back-right.
That hole was also one of the rare times when Love broke his legendary focus on the golf course — but only in the most satisfying way.
The subsequent shot, and Love trolling a pair of slightly obnoxious fans behind the green, has become the stuff of Players legend and 30 years later, Love said it remains one of his favorite moments in a World Golf Hall of Fame career loaded with them.
“Some people had told me I wasn’t cocky enough as a player,” Love said. “I had a lot of confidence but didn’t like showing it. But that was one time when I did. Those guys got me mad.”
Rewind that scenario to the beginning of the round. Love started the day three shots behind Nick Faldo but wasn’t coming off the best progression in the world: he opened the tournament with a 67, then shot 68 and on Saturday struggled a bit with a 71.
Faldo was going the other way, with a pair of 68s to start, then firing a brilliant 67 in the third round to get into the last group with Phil Blackmar.
Faldo, one of the greatest closers in major tournaments in golf history was one thing. But lurking one shot behind Love was Fred Couples, who a day before had fired the first 63 in tournament history, breaking his own record of 64.
The stage seemed set for what had been a winter and spring battle between Love and Couples, the two best players in the world and long-time friends who were trading haymakers on the Tour’s Western and Florida Swings.
Love, Couples dominated early ’92
The traveling slugfest started at the Tournament of Champions at La Costa when Couples tied for third and Love tied for seventh. They both posted top-10s at the Bob Hope Classic and then in the L.A. Open it boiled over as Couples beat Love with a birdie on the third playoff hole at Riveria to win. Both parred the last five holes in regulation and both birdied the first playoff hole before Couples finally ended it.
The Tour moved to Florida and the two went at it again. Couples finished second by two shots to Raymond Floyd at Doral and Love tied for fourth. Couples had another runner-up the following week at the Honda Classic, losing in a playoff to Corey Pavin (after Pavin eagled the 18th hole from 136 yards out at Weston Hills to force the playoff), then blew everyone away at Bay Hill, winning by nine shots — with Love tying for eighth.
At that point in the Tour schedule, Couples had six top-10s and two victories and Love had five top-10s and was looking for his first title and the fourth of his career. They would both go on to win three times that year, with Couples capturing the 1992 Masters and Love winning at Hilton Head and Greensboro.
“He was playing at a pretty high level,” said Love’s brother and caddie that season, Mark Love. “Week in and week out you felt like he had a chance to win and this was one of the big ones.”
Love and Couples, both a bit introverted, were suddenly the toasts of the golf world.
“Every week, it seemed like it was either me or Freddie in the interview room, and usually both of us,” Love said. “We were really going at it.”
Davis Love III waves to fans as he walks to the pin after chipping his ball from the gallery behind the eighth green into the hole for birdie and the lead during the final round of the 1992 Players Championship. He went on to win by four shots.
Chasing a legendary closer
And the final round of The Players had all the earmarks of being more of the same.
Couples, however, didn’t live up to his end of the deal, and it wasn’t really his fault. Couples developed a case of the flu overnight and came to the first day wheezing and hacking and posted a 74, 11 shots higher than the previous day, and quickly faded to a tie for 13th.
Blackmar would struggle to a 73 and Ian Baker-Finch had a 72 after beginning the day one shot clear of Love, his partner in the next-to-last pairing.
That left it up to Love trying to catch Faldo, who was at the peak of his considerable skills. Faldo had already won three of his six major championships and would go on later that summer to win his third Open championship. And the Stadium Course, with its tricky wind, pot bunkers and high grass, seemed tailor-made for the dogged Brit.
On the eighth tee, Love trailed Faldo by one shot. And after his tee shot found the high grass behind the green, it looked like he would be lucky to escape being only two down — and since Faldo was playing the par-5 ninth, which that week had given up the fifth-most birdies on the course, it might even be worse.
After all, who wants to trail Nick Faldo by three shots entering the back nine on Sunday in any tournament?
“I was getting to the point where people were saying I should win a major,” said Love, who could finally break that thick ice five years later at the PGA. “And this had everything you want in a major, the course, the field.”
And the pressure.
Love beats the odds — both ways
Love contemplated the shot behind the eighth green with his caddie and brother Mark and quickly saw the worst-case scenario. He had to get the ball high coming out of the rough, but land it softly, about halfway to the hole. If it went past the cup with any zip, he would face a long par attempt.
Then the loudmouths interceded on Love’s attempt to visualize the shot.
Two fans who had been behind the green betting on players started negotiating with each other over the odds of Love making par from where he was.
The bet was finally settled: one fan gave the other 5-to-1 that Love couldn’t get up and down.
Love gave no indication at the time he heard the fans. He didn’t even glance their way. He merely took the 60-degree wedge his brother handed him, took three practice swings, and gently lofted the ball in the air.
It had the desired effect. The ball landed just on the green, broke slightly left, and rolled into the hole.
Love then took the mask off. He turned to the fans and yelled: “You’re both wrong.”
And he was right. The bet was whether Love would save par or not. A carry-over.
But Love got the best carry-over: momentum.
Short game saves the day again
Ahead of him, Faldo inexplicably bogeyed the ninth hole and all of sudden, Love had a one-shot lead.
He made it two shots with a 30-foot birdie putt at the 10th when Mark Love talked his brother out of hitting a putt with break on it, telling him it was straighter than it looked.
It was.
Faldo cut the lead to one shot with a birdie at No. 11 and Love, laying up on the hole, faced another tense moment when he hit his wedge shot over the green.
No problem. A player who was mentioned with Couples as one of the longest hitters on the PGA Tour executed another up-and-down par from a difficult lie.
Love birdied the 12th hole but gave it away with a three-putt bogey at the 13th.
The 14th hole once again called on Love’s short game. He blew a 9-iron over the green and the ball was sitting on some muddy grass. Love plopped the ball out to within a foot and his lead was safe.
Faldo stumbled ahead of him and Love came to the final three holes still leading by two. His response was to hit the gas.
Love hit a 2-iron approach at No. 16 short of the green and nearly holed out for eagle. He then knocked his tee shot at No. 17 to within 5 feet of the hole and made the birdie for a four-shot lead.
“I was just happy to get it on the green,” Love said. “I felt like I had done enough at 16 and all I had to do was not have a disaster at 17.”
Love gouged a shot out of the right rough at the 18th to within 12 feet of the hole, drawing profuse praise from NBC announcers Dan Hicks and Johnny Miller. As he was walking to the hole, the sun broke through for the first time on what had been a cloudy day in the 60s.
“It wasn’t the rainbow that came out at Winged Foot,” he said of the legendary moment in New York in 1997 when Love tapped in for his major championship. “But it was a nice moment.”
Love two-putted for a 67 and a tie at the time for the course record that had been set four years before by Mark McCumber. It was the first of his two Players titles, with the second coming 11 years later when Love shot 64 in the final round to rally again, from two shots back.
Love said he takes special satisfaction for the short-game shots he had to execute at Nos. 8, 11 and 14 in 1992.
“Every time I played well there, it seemed like there was one of those chip-ins, a great up and down, or a shot out of the trees,” he said. “To win tournaments like that, you’ve got to play well but you also need to get a little bit lucky.”
And for one shot, a little bit cocky.
“Those guys distracted me a little bit but I just went back to what I had been doing,” he said.