“I’d probably rather be on my ski boat this weekend than playing here,” he said after shooting 73 Saturday for 6-over 222 after three rounds of The Players Championship.
…
“I’ve never played very good here,” Toms said. “I don’t particularly care for it. I think I’ve only played decent on one Pete Dye golf course ever, and that’s the one where I won at Quad City (in 1997), and it didn’t look anything like this.

“To me the first tee shot (on No. 1) is the most awkward shot we play all year, and it really doesn’t get a whole lot better for me as far as what my mental picture is. I’ve never had any success here. I played good maybe twice in my whole career. I don’t have good vibes coming in, and after I play it seems like it gets worse.”
…
“I’m just not sure that you’ll ever have a major championship with an island green for the 17th hole,” Toms said. “I don’t care if it’s 100 yards or 300 yards. But for this tournament I think it provides the drama that they want. It’s a big purse ($9 million), you’ve got to hit a good shot. It makes the finish very tough to get it done to try to win. If that’s what you’re looking for, that’s what they have.”

And just for completeness sakes, let’s take a look at some of David’s previous comments on TPC Sawgrass. Here’s an interview from the 2003 Players Championship.

Q. David, can you talk about the finishing holes, 16, 17, 18, your opinion of them, particularly 17 and how they affect the tournament?

DAVID TOMS: I think it’s a great finish. 16 you can make up a shot or two there, kind of a risk-reward second shot. Anything can happen there.

17, to be honest with you, I’d like to see them not give you a bailout but give you a little more room if you’re trying to protect a lead there. It’s a fairly good-sized green, but it’s just the fact if you don’t hit a good shot there — it’s fortunate if you lead the tournament from start to finish and then there’s one shot that can cost you everything.

18 is a great hole. It’s one of the best holes we play all year. It’s a tough tee shot depending on what the wind is doing. If it’s a left-to-right-wind it’s an extremely difficult tee shot, and then the second shot trying to get anywhere close. I think for a guy that’s trying to win the tournament, it’s a great finish, but it’s difficult. I mean, you’re going to have to battle your insides coming down the stretch, that’s for sure.

Sounds like David needs to find his happy place.

Get ready, though. It appears that the Commissioner’s fax machine has continued to spit out talking points and it’s rolled over into next week’s AT&T Classic at TPC Sugarloaf in Duluth, Georgia.

“The golf course should play much firmer and faster, which is the way it was designed to play,” Crawford said.

Since last year’s tournament, Crawford’s crews have completed the conversion from zoysia rough to Bermuda rough on the back nine. The front nine was finished last year.
…
“All these changes are designed to bring the bunkers back into play and get the course the way Greg Norman designed it,” Crawford said.

Cink said, “The fairways are running good, and it’s not that wide open; you’re not hitting into fields like you used to when the rough was dormant. Now they’ve brought some of the edges in, and it’s a pretty good driving course.”

I’m curious – which golf course in America was not designed to play “firm and fast”? By the way, Phil Mickelson won last year’s tournament at TPC Sugarloaf at -28.

“I want Tiger,” Sabbatini said. “Everyone wants Tiger. I want him to pick it up, and we’ll be up there late on Sunday.”
…
Sabbatini sounds like he’s requesting his own “thank-you-sir-may-I-have-another” moment. Sabbatini had a one-shot lead over Woods entering the final round last week at the Wachovia Championship and the two were paired together on Sunday. Sabbatini shot a 74 and tied for third. Woods shot a 69 and won tournament. That performance wasn’t enough to deter Sabbatini.

“I think a lot of people have commented in the past when people play with Tiger, they stand and watch the show and not participate,” Sabbatini said. “I’m not someone to participate to watch the show. I’m there to participate to win. I want to be paired with Tiger in the last group on Sunday here this week.”

You have to be a golfer to appreciate that name – he’s the true evil genious. Being a golfer and having a deep, rooting interest in golf course architecture, he’s my inspiration for my passion of golf course design.

And yet it’s bizarre how much, looking back on my golfing career, he has directly influenced me.

My first professional golf tournament was at a Pete Dye golf course – the Birckyard that has four holes inside the famous Indianapolis 500 speedway. It was a Senior PGA Tour event that I attended with my parents and brother.

My alma mater, Purdue University, has a golf course designed by him. In fact, he received an honorary doctorate from Purdue in 1998, the very same day I graduated. Looking back on my college career, I attempted to get a job on the construction crew building the golf course. If I have one regret in life, it’s that I didn’t insist that I be on that crew by being a huge pain in the butt until somebody gave me a job. I wouldn’t have cared what it was – digging ditches, laying sod, anything would have been fine with me.

I had the luck of meeting Pete Dye while playing golf on Purdue’s north course – the course he would eventually rip up and replace. It was one of those zin-like moments in life. There I was playing golf with a friend and I see a guy in an ivy cap with a dog walking the course by himself. I knew in an instant who it was – Pete Dye. I sent my friend on around while I went to bother Mr. Dye. He was out there walking the course – working on how the course would look and play. By the time I got to him, two others were making their way towards him – Tim Liddy (a design associate of Dye’s) and a student who was working on the course with the two of them. (I had to restrain myself from falling over dead for not having this student’s job! How could I have let this happen?) So I said hello to everybody and they went on about their business while I stood there and listened to the design changes Pete was looking for. It’s a moment I’ll never forget.

I got to meet Mr. Dye and his wonderful wife – Alice Dye – at the grand opening of the course. While the official grand opening was “invitation only” – and I didn’t have an invitation – that would never stop me from showing up for this. Outside the tent that had been set up, I ran into the pair. Talk about two of the most delightful people. Alice could not have been nicer – she talked to me as though we’d been friends for years. Again, a wonderful moment that I’ll always have.

As if that weren’t enough – two of my most memorable golf rounds took place on Pete Dye golf courses. I was not actually playing golf in the first one, but rather the caddy for my brother. My brother was attempting to qualify for the USGA juniour amatuer and the round was being played at Crooked Stick, Pete’s home course. My brother played a great round there, though I don’t recall his exact score, it was somewhere in the high-70’s. We had a great time going around the course. The other involves my brother and I as a team playing against two very good golfers (I should say that my brother is a very good golfer and I’m a decent golfer…) at Pete Dye’s Eagle Creek golf course on the north side of Indianapolis. It was a match we won.

Today is the start of the Players Championship – but it’s as much a celebration of Pete Dye as it is tournament golf.

TPC Atlanta – at an ancient 12 years old – has been undergoing improvements including replacing its rough – all of its rough.

TPC Boston, younger still than Atlanta, is undergoing major renovations.

TPC River Highlands is undergoing a $5 million dollar addition – of a driving range. A $5 million dollar driving range.

TPC Avenel has spent tens of millions of dollars over the past several years in an attempt to regain a PGA Tour event.

All in an effort to not have this said about it.

”Frankly, it’s one of my favorite courses in the whole network,” Pillsbury said. “I’m sure Heritage will continue to invest in it. I think it’s a club that really corresponds with what people expect at a TPC.”
…
”It’s a terrific daily-fee golf course,” Pillsbury said, “but it doesn’t host a tournament and just doesn’t fit the direction we’re taking our brand.”

Such was the fate of two TPC courses in south Florida – Eagle Trace and Heron Bay. They didn’t keep up and they got dumped.

The media need to quit fighting the FedEx Cup points race. It’s the Tour’s basic competitive structure, but I’ve had writers swear to me they will never mention in their game story what a victory did for the winner in terms of his FedEx Cup standing. Here’s my question for those who think that: If NFL or Major League Baseball writers disagreed with the league adding another layer of playoffs, did they refuse to cover those games?

“We’ve had a lot players tell us that the course is in great shape and that it’s a fair setup as long as the greens don’t get too fast,” Klauk says. “Fortunately, we have more control over the conditions than we ever did before and we can get the golf course just how we want it, which is the way it should be for a major championship.”

Defending champion Stephen Ames makes the point that the fairways aren’t even as “wide” as they measure.

“When we play a firmer, faster golf course, the fairways that are 25 and 30 yards wide become half that, because any kind of curve on the ball … it’s not going to stay in the fairway.”

And we’re already on Shinnecock watch this week. Tournament director Brian Goin says that firm and fast conditions are going to prevail this week.

“Everyone is psyched about that, but at the same time we’re all very much aware that the setup is going to have to be watched carefully,” Goin said. “On a hole like 17 (the island-green par 3), because it’s exposed, we don’t want to let the green get away from us. It could become a circus, and that’s not something we want.”

PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem, one to never play second fiddle, goes ahead and declares his course second best – to Augusta, of course.

”It will clearly be the second-best stage in golf,” commissioner Tim Finchem said recently. “And I don’t mind being second to Augusta.”

Clearly.

Personally, I find that sad commentary on American golf. For the most part, though, he’s right about the 17th hole summarizing what many Americans’ want out of their golf – ultimate risk and ultimate disaster. Sure, if the participant succeeds, he’s rewarded with a somewhat nice prize – he gets to keep his golf ball. But the disaster is what the American golf spectator craves.

And many organizations are racing to give that spectator exactly what they want. The USGA has been specializing in it since the turn of the previous century. The Masters, under the tutelage of the USGA, did a pretty good job this year. Now the PGA Tour is getting in on the act – redoing the golf course so that they could get the rough longer and the greens faster.

American golf is actually pretty boring today. The unimaginative 6″ rough which leads to only one shot – the ever exciting wedge back to the fairway. The perfectly manicured 25 yard, flat fairway. The flat, two tiered green stimping out at 14. The bomb and gouge excitement of 320 drive and wedge to 8 feet to a pin 6 feet from the green’s edge. Yep – American golf at its finest. Every once in awhile we get something a little different like the 17th at Sawgrass – but there isn’t any subtlety, nuance or options. It’s in your face brutality.

And, sadly, that is exactly what the American golf spectator is looking for today.

Tough question because the Players Championship is a great golf tournament – the best the PGA Tour puts on. I lean towards no – because I don’t really see the point. Elevating it to a fifth major just seems out of kilter with golf tradition. Of course, the first grand slam didn’t include the Masters or PGA Championship. They got elevated to major status and the amateurs (US and British) were removed. The modern grand slam was essentially created by Arnold Palmer in 1960.

We easily acknowledge that Bobby Jones holds a career grand slam (and is, of course, the only player to win THE grand slam of winning all four majors in the same calendar year) despite the fact he doesn’t own a Masters or PGA Championship title. Could we not make the same historical ruling if the Players Championship is elevated to major status?

The Players Championship is a great golf tournament – some of the more interesting and entertaining tournaments have taken place there. The Fuzzy Zoeller/Greg Norman duel in 1994 was a great tournament to watch. (Funny – Norman shot -24 that year and the golf tournament was exciting. Hmmm…) Of course, since they went to attempting to be a brutal golf tournament in a lame attempt to elevate itself to major status via golf torture, not only has the entertainment value diminished, so has the quality of the champion.

But the bottom line is that it is not a major. Much like the President’s Cup doesn’t seem nearly as important as the Ryder Cup, the Players, while a good tournament, just seems like a cheap ripoff of the Masters. The PGA Tour is good at that – they did the same thing with the FedEx Cup and the Nextel Cup of NASCAR. It just doesn’t feel right – but it will forever remain TNED.

Deane Beaman, who created the Players Championship, makes his case for it to be a major:

It’s the best tournament that can be put on — in every respect. From the standpoint of — the golf course and the fairness of the challenge of it, the volunteers, the organization, the field, the financial reward, the clubhouse facility — now it’s the highest standard in the world. It’s the standard by which all facilities will be judged in the future. And we can’t do anymore than that. I consider it the best tournament in the world. The moniker the press puts on up … it’s up to them. We did all we could do to make it the best event in the world. And we did it. I did that for the 21 years I was there and Tim Finchem and his crew have done a fabulous just of taking it to a new level. And that’s all you can do.