The New Rites of Spring
Rickie Fowler captured The Players’
Championship in May 2015.
22
“This is a place where we know we can play well
at and we know we can win it, luckily, it’s still the same
golf course, still the same look, but you just make that
adjustment as far as wind direction goes.”
–Rickie Fowler
Ponte Vedra Beach is 12 degrees cooler
in March than it is in May. Winds tend to
come from the north and northeast. Play-
ers will hit off overseeded rye in March, a
change from the Bermudagrass present in
the warmer, more humid spring.
“I would say if I did have to pick, I
would probably pick March where it’s
overseeded and a little softer, for the rea-
son that the greens are not really designed
for run-up shots, at least 17 isn’t,” Phil
Mickelson said before last year’s event.
“There’s a lot of holes like that where
we’ve got to fly it on and stop it. I think
the way it played in March, I kind of pre-
V I R G I N I A G O L F E R | M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 1 9
ferred over the firm, fast. I don’t think
when it was designed, it was designed to
be firm, fast the way it has played the last
few years.”
Another player to watch at Sawgrass
will be past champion Rickie Fowler,
who earned his second career PGA Tour
victory in May 2015 at The Players. He’s
won three times since then, including on
Super Bowl Sunday in Scottsdale when
he sweated out a two-stroke victory over
South African Branden Grace.
“This is a place where we know we can
play well at and we know we can win it,”
Fowler said before last year’s event, add-
vsga.org
As they say, everything old is new again.
The PGA Tour underwent another sched-
ule restructuring for its 2018-19 season,
and The Players—set for March 14-17—
was back in its old spot on the precipice
of spring.
“I honestly feel like that might be a
good change because if you look at it,
we have a lot of events we play, from the
beginning of the season up to Augusta,
and then it seems like every other week is
either a major, World Golf Championship
or The Players,” defending Masters cham-
pion Patrick Reed said before last year’s
final May Players. “You know, I think it’s
a good idea to kind of spread it out where
you have, throughout the entire season,
you have big events in there where there’s
some space in between, just because you
want to have big events throughout the
year, not all just bunched up at one time.”
The date isn’t the only thing that will
change about the event. On average,