Players are freaking out at TPC Sawgrass. It’s a proper Players Championship

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — You probably haven’t seen Jordan Spieth throw a club before. His way of Getting It Out is more verbal. But on the 16th hole Saturday, he let one loose.

Spieth says he didn’t mean it, and you have to believe him — he likes to fake swing while walking forward; this time the club slipped — but it’s kind of how things have been going at this year’s Players. Between the test, its prominence and its place on the calendar, this week delivers everyone a mid-term report card — Masters Week is just 22 days away. What grade do they feel they deserve right now, and what does this week mean for the upcoming finals?

”For 72 holes around this place, you certainly can’t fake it,” Rory McIlroy said. “If you do well around here, I feel like you’re ready for anything coming up for the rest of the year.”

It wasn’t long ago the No. 1 player in the world was sitting out, healing a hole in his hand. Scottie Scheffler hasn’t won yet, and while that’s an incredibly high standard only he has set in recent years — his week has featured signs of prickliness at any suggestion he won’t soon. There’s no shortage of frustration evidence, though, with multiple clubs being thrown and balls tossed purposefully into the nearest hazard. 

Meanwhile, Xander Schauffele is on a ball count — or at least he was — coming back from his rib injury, and he’s rather unhappy with it. Schauffele has spent the last 24 months almost exclusively playing better-than-average golf, but since he returned at last week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational it’s been two steps forward, two steps back. He followed Friday’s round — and 59th-straight made cut — by telling reporters he was going to “blow right through” the ball count on the driving range because his game was simply, “really bad.” 

“There’s really not much more going through my head other than, ‘I’m hitting it like crap. I need to hit it better. I need to do everything better,’” Schauffele added Saturday, after a third-round 77. He says he feels behind the 8-ball compared to the rest of the Tour, his body not allowing him to return sooner than at Bay Hill and TPC Sawgrass, two of the toughest courses all year. “It’s a true test of where my game’s at,” he said, “and that’s obviously not very good.”

Understood! Schauffele reiterated those points by joining next week’s Valspar Championship field at the last minute. It’ll be his final stop before the Masters. He needs reps. And he isn’t alone. After missing the cut at Sawgrass, Viktor Hovland is playing next week’s Valspar for the first time in three years. 

Also down in Tampa will be Spieth, our accidental club-thrower, who felt badly enough about it that he walked over and fixed the area where his club connected with the turf. He normally signs up for the Tampa event, but it feels extra necessary right now. He, too, is coming back from injury and began this season stressing long-term patience. But then he played well, and has been battling the urge to press. 

If he’s anxious about anything, it’s the lingering feeling of denial. Spieth couldn’t play last week’s Signature Event because he didn’t get in the field — a result of finishing outside the Top 50 last year — and he didn’t receive a sponsor’s exemption. The face-to-path element of his swing isn’t where he wants to see it just yet, and he wants to earn some “house money” in the FedEx Cup ranking before he can play freer. Hence his disappointment in that necked shot on 16 that ended up in the water. “If I do par that hole, four under is probably top 20 by the end of the day,” Spieth said, “and instead I’m finishing at two under. I’ve had a couple swings that were a couple shots this week, and the guys who are at the top don’t make those.”

In years past, we’ve seen a number of Tour stars elevate ahead of the Masters, and it often shows when they arrive at the Players. But even two of this season’s standouts had serious flashpoints of uneasiness this week. See: Collin Morikawa’s rebuttal to TV criticism and Rory McIlroy’s practice round ejection of a spectator who had ridiculed him loudly on the 18th tee. (His response to questions was similarly frosty.) Just last week, McIlroy paid an Uber driver nearly $1,000 to drive some older clubs he was more confident in from Jupiter to Orlando. You can only imagine how this week would be going if he hadn’t.

Despite all that, McIlroy has worked himself into contention, and stayed afloat Saturday when Sawgrass and Mother Nature combined to form the ultimate stress test. This course does this at least once annually — second round in 2023, the second round in 2022 and the first round in 2021 — where the scoring average is multiple shots above par. The work of Pete Dye puts players on edge, has them tweeting about unfair hole locations (Joel Dahmen), calling it quits with their caddie (Matt Fitzpatrick), feeling existential and emotional (Max Homa), and flailing around when the wind pushes their balls into bunkers. See: Will Zalatoris on the 14th hole.

It’s both this place and this time of year. If Saturday’s round was ever turned into a documentary, Zalatoris’ “What kind of a kick was that” — en route to a quadruple bogey — would be in the opening credits. He was one of a handful who pros who teased themselves with the idea of winning the biggest tournament of the season, only to realize their game just isn’t that tidy yet. An even scarier thought looms: they might be running out of time.