1 major-worthy thing the Players Championship gets right

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — For as along as pro golf has existed, its fans have strained to see the action. The balls might fly high in the air, but the game is viewed at ground level, on two feet, roaming about to get in the right position to actually see the strike and, if you’re lucky, the result of a shot. 

Following Tiger Woods’ rounds outside the ropes is basically an impossible jockey given 20,000 others are trying to do the same. Phil Mickelson’s dad, Phil Sr., used to follow his son through the lens of a tiny periscope built to peek upward for a clear angle over the horde. Boxy versions of those periscopes were a mainstay at Open Championships in the 80s and 90s on the flat, linksland courses of the U.K. They’ve even made their way into the crowd at the last two Ryder Cups, an over-populated event not always brought to convenient viewing locales.

This week there’s none of that. Fan experience – and particularly fan viewing — is one element this tournament has nailed for its entire existence. Slopes that rise just off the fairway — sometimes abruptly and at others softly — mounding for fans to rise above the action, to say nothing of that anaconda of grandstands snaking the finishing holes. If the PGA Tour wants to claim its premier event is major-worthy — which it not-so-subtly did — well, it has at least checked the box of a massive, goosebumps-inducing theater. 

Compared to other sporting arenas, the Players is as big as PGA Tour golf can really feel, and some of that may seem particularly new. But Stadium Golf is more than 40 years old. The 1991 PGA Tour media guide went so far as to call it “the original concept of the PGA Tour.” TPC Sawgrass had just reached its 10th birthday at that point, and the Tour wholeheartedly believed it had created a new way of staging the game.

Every TPC was built with a specific Tour member serving as a design consultant — which might explain some of the sameness to the test of golf they provide, but ironically led to many of the tracks being overly difficult at first, Sawgrass chief among them. At that point, the Tour believed in testing the game’s best to the point of angst … on behalf of the fans. (A lot has changed over the years.)

Here’s what came next in the media guide: “It was the Tour’s view that the spectator had been left out in golf course design throughout the years and when it came time for the PGA Tour to build its own course, the opportunity presented itself for the Tour to build a course that not only challenged the players, but allowed spectators to see the action as never before.

“It’s called ‘Stadium Golf’ and once you’ve viewed a tournament on a Stadium Golf Course. you’ll understand why the network has grown in such a short period of time.”

There was an early pledge that 30,000 people could find their own spot alongside Sawgrass’ 18th hole, which feels like a lot considering half of the hole is bordered by a lake. But is it inaccurate? The media guide promised you’d never see one of those goofy periscopes at Sawgrass. But you’d absolutely be better off with one last week, at the flat, long and difficult Bay Hill. Topography matters! And never more than on the finishing stretch. That bowl of holes that can create the noise of an away football game. After a bogey-finishing 62 last year, Justin Thomas talked like he was an opposing quarterback, needing “blinders on” to get through the chaos.

Where else in golf does that exist?

The whole tournament, its course, its field, its meaning over time — may not add up to a major championship. But it’s still okay to admit there’s nothing like the cauldron players play through beneath the fans at Sawgrass, in much the same way there’s no event more polished and revered than the Masters, no test of guile like the U.S. Open and no badge of golfing honor quite like lifting the Claret Jug. Uniqueness of product are what we’re after as golf viewers. We get that this week.