‘They might not finish:’ What 10 handicap would shoot on Saturday at Sawgrass

One by one, after a choking day, they exhaled. 

“This is as tough a golf as you’re ever going to play,” Keegan Bradley said. “This is a course you want to play under no conditions because of how tough the shots are.”

“No, it was just extremely hard,” Brooks Koepka said. “Yeah, I felt like I got some bad breaks along with not playing well. Kind of one of those things for me. It’s just tough, man.”

“I thought they were fairly easy. I can’t believe that only one guy shot under par so far. Guys must really be struggling with their games this week,” Kevin Kisner began. 

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“No, it’s brutal, man,” he ended. 

Their antagonist? A TPC Sawgrass course that turned the dial on the fans past “hold onto your hats” and ended on “take them off completely,” which many players did. After a three-day storm that extended Thursday’s first round of the Players Championship all the way to Saturday, left behind were winds over Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., that reached 40 mph in spots and blew scores up. At day’s end, the average for those who finished their second rounds was a whopping 75.320. 

The hardest of the 18 were the final two — the 136-yard, par-3, island-green 17th played as the second-most difficult hole, with a 3.695 average score; and the 436-yard, par-4 18th was the hardest, at nearly a stroke over par. All of which begged a question to a few pros afterward, one of no doubt interest to, you, golf fan and golfer, watching from home:

What would a 10 handicap shoot on 17 and 18 on Saturday?

“A lot. I mean, they might not finish,” said Sam Ryder, who birdied the 17th and bogeyed the 18th during his second round. “You just have to hit it so solid, you can’t — that’s the only way you can predict how far the ball is going to go. For guys, really good PGA Tour players who miss it just the tiniest, tiniest of margins, and it’s a 20-yard difference with how far it goes or direction. It’s just really tough.”

How many balls would a 10 handicap put in the water?

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“It’s one of those things where they might hit the first one on the green or they might go through their whole bag,” Ryder said. “I would say it would take a couple at least to try and get a feel for it. But a 10-handicapper is a good golfer. I would probably put my money if it was a coin flip; I would put my money on it being in the water before being on the green to start.”

What say you, Kis? What would the 10-handicap shoot, after you parred 17 and bogeyed 18 during the second round?

“They’d be lucky to finish,” Kisner said, echoing Ryder. “Seventeen, you could be there all day. I mean, I didn’t think if you hit it in the water, the drop zone was much of a piece of cake, either, because you got so much spin and the greens were just so receptive.”

Then there’s Koepka, who was the third player overall to tee off on 17 on Saturday (as part of his first round) and played both holes twice. On the first go-around on 17, he hit his tee shot in the water and double-bogeyed the hole, and on the second, he tripled-bogeyed after another tee ball that was rinsed. On 18, he parred twice. His question was revised slightly, but the answer was the same.   

“Brooks,” a reporter asked, “what’s a scratch golfer shoot out there today?”

“A lot,” he said. “A lot.”