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TULSA, Okla. — Anirban Lahiri was planning to tee off alone.

It had been a whirlwind just to get to this point for Lahiri, a 34-year-old Indian PGA Tour pro who wasn’t sure he’d play at all. His wife was due to give birth to a baby boy and he was committed to being there to ensure that everything went smoothly. He’d drawn a mental line: If his child hadn’t arrived by Tuesday morning, he’d officially withdraw from the PGA Championship. Otherwise? He’d see what he could do.

“We had a false alarm on Saturday where we thought she was going into labor,” Lahiri said. “And then Sunday was just — nothing. So I started to think maybe I wasn’t going to play this week. But Sunday night she started feeling it and Monday morning, next thing you know, here he is. Everything went as well as it could and I’m very grateful and thankful for that.”

Lahiri stuck around their home in south Florida for the rest of the day. His in-laws were there, too. By Tuesday he felt comfortable gearing up to hit the road. And then on Wednesday morning he walked onto the first tee at 9 a.m., ready for his very first look at Southern Hills.

Then Tiger Woods walked onto the tee, too.

A group had just gone off the first, so it made sense that the two singles would pair up. With Woods, of course, it isn’t that simple: He comes with a team in tow plus a small horde of media members and a larger horde of Oklahomans, already five deep around the tee by this point.

“It was totally random,” Lahiri said of the pairing. “He just walked on the tee and I’d just gotten there and he said, ‘Hey, can I join you?'”

Lahiri first met Woods in 2014, when he and fellow Indian golfer Shiv Kapur played a three-hole skins game at the end of an exhibition at Delhi Golf Club. The meeting left a strong impression, and not long after Lahiri won his first DP World Tour event at the Malaysian Open, won the Hero Indian Open shortly thereafter and leapt inside the top 50 in the world.

He has played the PGA Tour since 2015 but said he and Woods have never played together since their meeting in Delhi. If Lahiri was nervous, he didn’t show it. He and Woods shared a laugh, he teed up driver and ripped one down the first fairway.

Over the next two-and-a-half hours Woods and Lahiri played Southern Hills’ front nine. They walked down several fairways side by side, chatting and laughing. They talked about shared memories. They mused on the finer points of the golf course. The crowd swelled. Soon, thousands lined the ropes. Inside, they looked every bit like old friends.

“We had a bunch of laughs,” Lahiri said. “I was ribbing him about his age and his health. And we were talking about Arjun [Atwal], who’s one of his good friends. Tiger has always been super nice to me.”

Lahiri enters this week’s event in strong form. He finished runner-up at the Players Championship in March, the best finish of his PGA Tour career. That result kicked off four top-15s in his next five starts, including a T6 at the Wells Fargo Championship two weeks ago. After falling to nearly 500th in the world in 2021, Lahiri is back inside the top 75.

Instruction

Good news had traveled fast about Lahiri’s son; Woods offered his congratulations and followed with plenty of questions.

“Since I just became a dad, we were swapping dad knowledge,” he said. “He’s the same as me, actually, he has an older daughter and a younger son.” Lahiri’s daughter is three years old.

As for the practice itself? Lahiri said the extra thousands didn’t inhibit his prep. If anything, they enhanced his focus.

“To be honest with you it was a lot smoother than I thought it might be with the crowds and everything,” he said.

Woods peeled off after nine holes, leaving Lahiri with a new high-profile partner on the back side: Bryson DeChambeau. The crowd dispersed, but intrigue followed — DeChambeau was himself pondering whether he’d be able to play the event. (He’d later withdraw.)

Lahiri’s heart is in Florida. But he’s hoping his golf game made the trip to Tulsa.

“I would like to be there as well right now, but [my wife is] recovering well and we have a good support system there and she wanted me to play, too,” he said.

As for their son? His name is Avyaan. “It means ‘auspicious beginning,'” Lahiri said.

Avyaan has already had one.

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PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — I feel like I made a new friend, during this Florida swing: Anirban Lahiri, the 34-year-old Indian golfer who finished solo-second at this year’s special five-day edition of the Players Championship. He likely wouldn’t know my name, but still.

During a big group press conference on Sunday, and after he had endured a long day in the office, I asked Anirban to compare the courses he grew up playing in India with TPC Sawgrass.

He laughed and said, “I’ll invite you to come and play the courses I played growing up!”

The greens were a 6 on the Stimpmeter, in India. (On the PGA Tour, they’re 12ish.) The fairways were fluffier than Erik van Rooyen’s mustache. (Tour fairways, many weeks, are about as firm and fast as a bowling alley.) The first time Lahiri played a course with proper fairways — as a 10-year-old playing in a junior tournament at Royal Calcutta — he asked his father to buy him a 7-wood. He was looking for loft and forgiveness. Just like us.

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I guess that’s a big part of it, the appeal. He’s normal in stature, in attitude, in conversation. He’s an open person. He’s been working at his craft for a long time and he’s trying to get better at it. Who among us cannot relate to that?

His given name, Anirban, comes from a Sanskrit word for a fire that cannot be extinguished. (Thank you, Wikipedia.) It is said with the same rhythm as honor bar. He lives in a suburban golf development in Palm Beach Gardens on the unfashionable west side of Florida’s Turnpike, but just up the road from professional golf’s glittery crowd. His father is a gynecologist. His wife’s name is Ipsa. They have one child. Let’s see — what other fun facts can I tell you about him?

He wore plaid pants on Monday, for the final day of the Players Championship, in which he played in the day’s final threesome. He’s won three national championships, in India, in Malaysia and in Macau. He has played in three U.S. Opens and six British Opens. I had to look that up, of course.

This is more obvious: He is a golfer of color in a game, at least on the PGA Tour, that is overwhelmingly white. He’s fluent in English, Bengali, Punjabi — and golf. It never ceases to amaze me, whenever the best in the world gather to play golf for high stakes and big paydays, to see the many different paths there are to the Sunday leaderboard. Or, in this case, Monday.

Cameron Smith, a son of working-class Australia, played a bizarre and unlikely final round to get himself in the house at 13 under par. Lahiri, one threesome behind Smith and in the day’s last group, had a chance to tie him on 18. He hit a superb drive. He flared an iron, right of the hole and short of the green.

The lie for his third shot was like nothing he would have seen in India, even at Royal Calcutta. There was no margin for error. You could pitch it. You could chip it. You could putt it. He was 40 feet from the hole, nothing but short grass and shorter grass from his ball to its home.

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Lahiri was in solo second at the time. The boldest play, by far, and the best chance for holing the shot, by far, was to pitch it. Pitch it, land it just so, let it roll out like a putt. If it goes in, he’s in a playoff. But if he flubs it off that tight lie, he could make any score there.

You could chip it, low and running and spinning. A chip shot would not have required such a big swing, or such exquisite timing. But it might have had less chance of going in, because it’s a little harder to predict the speed of a chip that a pitch where you have flown your ball over the slope.

The safest shot, by far, was to putt it. Putt it close. Make or don’t make the next one. Miss and you have tied for second, instead of solo second. Make the second one and you have solo second. If you were really nervous and really honest with yourself, you’d putt.

“I was surprised how calm I was,” Lahiri said. He was speaking of the whole day, in which he shot 69. But he could have been talking about his third shot on 18, too.

Lahiri pitched it to a foot and tapped in. Solo second. He earned $2.1 million. It was his best finish in his PGA Tour career. It was the most money, by far, he’s ever earned at any event. He was a long way from Royal Calcutta and the army course he grew up playing. But he looked like he was right at home. He finished one shot behind a mega-talent. Lahiri is not a mega-talent. He’s a golfer from India playing the PGA Tour and trying to get better at golf. Here’s to more, to him and those like him.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com

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PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — Cameron Smith’s mullet was blowing in the wind. And you know what that means: TPC Sawgrass was drying out.

Crazily, astonishingly, the slender and bold Australian golfer, from a long line of slender and bold Australian golf talents — looking at you, Greg Norman and Adam Scott! — hit driver on 18 when another golfer might have hit a 2-wood or a 3-hybrid or a 4-iron, on account of the lake on the left and the pine needles on the right.

But Mr. Smith didn’t come to PVB to lay up!

Bam! Right on the pine needles.

Now he had a hook lie. (Ball above his feet.) To a hook fairway. (Tilting toward the lake.) With a hook club on a hook path. (Slightly hooded iron, struck from the inside.) Riding a hook wind. (Right to left.) Plus, that blowing mullet and those drying fairways.

Balls

Bomba-bomba-bomba-bomba-bomba.

Is this ball ever gonna stop?

Rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling.

Across the fairway. Through the courtesy rough. Across the top of the wooden bulkhead.

Plop.

Like that old Nike spot where Rory and Tiger played shots into champagne glasses.

But this one was in the lake.

You probably have done this math in your golfing life: one on the pine needles, two in the drink, three out. And now you’re looking at the pitch shot of your life, with a $3.6 million payday on the line. OK, not you. Cam Smith, aged 28 and seven months, born and raised in Queensland and now living in Jacksonville, Fla.

Let’s review his collegiate playing record.

Well, that was fast.

Dude turned pro at 19. You know, to play golf for money! Just like Bruce Devlin and Graham Marsh and Greg Norman and Adam Scott. 

Quick note, for you historians of PGA Tour paydays. The most dominating performance in the history of golf was brought to you by Tiger Woods at the 2000 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, when he won by 15 and earned $800,000.

How quaint.

When Smith was on 18, Anirban Lahiri, aka The Man Who Does Not Quit, had not yet made his 2 on 17, the par-3 with the island green. The likable golfer from India was in the day’s final threesome. Smith was in the group ahead of him. Smith’s birdie on 17 got him to 14 under and, with Lahiri at 11 under at the time, all Smith really had to do on 18 was not pull a van de Velde.

(See: 1999 British Open, not won by Jean van de Velde, le golfing Frenchman who made a 6 on 18, resulting in a three-man playoff.)

Smith almost pulled a van de Velde.

He almost did a lot of things.

His first 13 holes featured one par! You talk about walking a tightrope.

Birdie on 1.

On 2.

On 3.

On 4.

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At this point, he had to be channeling Tiger. Just two questions: What’s the course record, and which way to the first tee? (Tiger, in his Hall of Fame remarks.)

Well, they give you an escort to the first tee here, if you’re a player in the Players. As for the course record, it’s 63, now shared by Dustin Johnson, who finished his record-tying round Monday with a nifty 9th hole pitch-in.

PAR! Yes, Smith made par on 5.

Another birdie on 6, just because.

A bogey on 7.

Another on 8.

Another on 9.

He went out in two under par, but it had to be about the damnedest 34 ever recorded in this tournament. 

Birdie on 10. In the rain, of course. The theme of the week, but this time the shower was only passing.

Birdies on 11 and 12 and 13.

After two pars on 14 and 15, the par-5 16th hole at Pete Dye’s TPC Sawgrass, aka the Stadium Course, represents your last best chance to make a birdie. Cam Smith needed one. He was leading. But, you know: cush.

Once, 16 at Sawgrass played like 13 at Augusta National. Dye wanted righty pros to draw a driver or hook a 3-wood and have to think about whether you wanted to go for the green in two, with a lake to the right of the green. Those days are so over, both at 16 at Sawgrass and, to a lesser degree, at 13 at Augusta. Now the players, one after another, hit a high bombed driver almost over the left trees. Smith looked to do the same. But he hit a dead pull off the tee, right into the trees. It rattled among them. Everybody else took the right bridge off the tee. He took the left. The tee shot went all of 180 yards.

The four shots he hit after that were as big as anything he did all week. Punch shot out through a corridor that was maybe 15 feet wide.

Smoked an iron from 240 yards to the front left of the green. Two-putted from 50 feet, the second one a four-footer.

They should give you half a mil just for that.

So he made a par where he might have made a birdie, on 16. He made a birdie where par is a damn good score, on 17. He made a bogey on 18 but did it the hard way — with a world-class pitch — when he could have made an easy one. With Lahiri birdieing 17 himself, he needed that bogey. He won by a shot. It was great March-in-Florida golf.

Smith couldn’t say what the money meant to him, not directly. But he did offer this, describing his mother’s family and his father’s family: “They’re working-class people who have had to work their whole life to live. That’s just kind of what I grew up in.”

Tiger Woods, in an interview with Mike Tirico of NBC Sports that aired last week, said almost the exact same thing:

“I’m a kid from Southern California that really didn’t have a whole lot.”

Smith has a penguin on his shirt, an old-timey neutral grip, a flowing swing with no hit in it, irons with an oil-can finish, a mullet haircut, a mustache, a Jacksonville address, a cold one on tap and maybe another after that. A throwback. How refreshing.

It took a while to get there, but this Players was golf. In the end, this thing got good. It was the course, the moment, the leaderboard. The winner.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com

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PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — This Players Championship, here on the eve of its finale, feels like a changing-of-the-guard event. But not one of those orderly ceremonies, like you see at Buckingham Palace. This one is kind of weird.

There’s no Tiger, no Phil, no Rickie, no Bryson here. They were never in the field, as we’ve known for days.

But what about Collin Morikawa, Jordan Spieth, Brooks Koepka or Xander Schauffele? Might they fill the void?

Nope.

They all missed the cut.

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You already know that Sunday night did not close with a new Players Championship champion. Thursday’s rain, working hand-in-hand with Friday’s rain and Saturday’s rain, killed any chance of that happening. Why the PGA Tour can’t get a weather agreement with Mother Nature Inc. is hard to fathom. It has deals with most everybody else. But there it is.

The new champion — likely a player* who has never won a Players or a major — will be decided at the end of a long Monday. The third round should finish Monday morning. The fourth round will be played Monday afternoon, in threesomes, off two tees and without the customary grandeur this tournament prizes. 

What a way for a fella to win $3.6 million.

Not that Anirban Lahiri, Harold Varner, Sebastian Munoz, Cameron Smith, Sam Burns, Tom Hoge and other contenders are complaining.

*Yes, Francesco Molinari, Sergio Garcia and Shane Lowry** have all won Grand Slam events, and Garcia has won a Players. Any of them could win. But they are long shots.

**Shane Lowry, Irish winner of the 2019 British Open at Royal Portrush, made a hole-in-one on Sunday on 17 — a par-3, with an island green surrounded by a lake. Soon after, and with Lowry still on the course, PGA Tour officials, in concert with the good people at PGA Tour catering, generously put out a cooler filled with slender 12-ounce cans of Michelob Ultra on the mock-wood floor of the press-building café. Taped to the cooler was a sign: “Michelob Ultra courtesy of Shane Lowry. Thanks!!”

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Well, thanks indeed, but it could be noted that Lowry was on the course at the time. Also, have you seen this Shane Lowry? He doesn’t seem to be the kind of guy who is going to sweat over the carb-count of his preferred beer.

So, yes, things are a little weird at this Players. Well, what did you expect for the PGA Tour’s so-called signature event in 2022? Men’s professional golf has been running on weirdness for two years now.

You know: the pandemic; Tiger Woods terrifying car crash last year; the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riots and how they caused the relocation of this year’s PGA Championship from a Trump course, in New Jersey, to Southern Hills,  in Tulsa; the many reports about the prospect of an international tour, backed by the Saudi ruling class, is attempting to challenge the PGA Tour; the immolation of Mickelson, the reigning PGA Championship winner, by way of his pointed comments about both the PGA Tour and this Saudi-backed tour.

Enter your leader, through the 47 holes he has played, the hugely amiable Anirban Lahiri of India, age 34. His father is a gynecologist. We note that because it’s unusual. Justin Thomas’ father is a golf pro. That’s more common.

Lahiri is nine under par. Burns, who has played 45 holes, is seven under. He is playing the role, in this changing-of-the-guard theme, formerly played by Sean O’Hair. O’Hair was a quiet, hardworking, hard-on-himself mega-talent who caught Tiger’s eye. Burns is a quiet, hardworking, hard-on-himself mega-talent who caught Tiger’s eye. In 2007, when O’Hair had a one-shot lead in the Players through three rounds over Mickelson, it was an open secret on Tour that Woods was rooting for O’Hair in the finale. No saying who Woods is rooting for this year. He’s not doing any TV commentary, not that he would give much away if he did.

We can guess who Rory Sabbatini is rooting for. Lahiri! Sabbatini was paired with Lahiri last week at Bay Hill, when the third round was played on its traditional day, Saturday. Sabbatini withdrew from the tournament after 13 holes with a knee injury but walked the remaining five holes with Lahiri, just to keep him company. That’s a rare thing to happen — if it has ever happened! Sabbatini said later that he would have only done that for 20 percent of the players on Tour. Sabbo is a particular guy.

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Earlier on Sunday, Lahiri was asked about this odd-couple friendship. He said, “I came over early in 2016 and I played with Sabbo a few times. Sabbo’s Sabbo. There’s no one else like him. I kind of enjoy that. I played a lot of golf in Europe and Asia. Spent a lot of times with Aussies and South Africans, they’re all different, they have their own quirks, they have their own humor. More sarcasm, a little drier. I get it. I think Sabbo and I hit it off well in that sense.”

Lahiri spent several holes at Bay Hill trying to get Sabbatini to withdraw. He could see he wasn’t right. 

“I tried to tell him on the 9th to go home. He wouldn’t listen to me. On the 11th I called an official. He was like, ‘I can’t force him.’ But Sabbo was just adamant that he wouldn’t leave me out there.”

This guy is such a gem. Asked to compare the courses of his boyhood in India with TPC Sawgrass, he said this:

“I’ll invite you to come and play the courses I played growing up! It doesn’t compare.

“We do have some good golf courses in India, don’t get me wrong, but I grew up playing on Army golf courses. The first junior event I played at the age of 10 at Royal Calcutta Golf Club was the first time I ever played on a no-preferred-lie golf course. That’s what I grew up on, greens rolling about 6 [on the Stimpmeter] on a good day. This doesn’t really compare.”

The Royal Calcutta fairways were mown. Lahiri had never seen such a thing before. He asked his father to buy him a 7-wood, to help him get the ball in the air.

As for TPC Sawgrass, well, we all know what Hogan said about it: There are no 7-wood shots at TPC Sawgrass. But you do have to take some spin off the ball playing 17. Make a 1, but the press room some beer. Win the $3.6 mil, call a Grant Thornton advisor immediately.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com

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Rory Sabbatini couldn’t play. So instead he worked.

In one of the more, we’ll call it, unusual things you’ll see in a professional golf tournament, Sabbatini withdrew with a knee injury after 13 holes from Saturday’s third round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational, only he quit from playing. He continued to walk with playing partner Anirban Lahiri, rather than hike back to the clubhouse.

And on the par-3 17th hole at Bay Hill, Sabbatini grabbed a rake, took 13 swipes with it and cleaned up the mark Lahiri had left in a greenside bunker. 

“Now this is strange,” announcer Jimmy Roberts said on the Golf Channel broadcast. “So we told you that Rory Sabbatini withdrew after the 13th hole. He was playing with Aniban Lahiri. But he’s continued to walk with him. Not only walk with him, Peter …”

“He’s grooming,” analyst Peter Jacobsen said.  

“He’s raking the bunkers,” Roberts said. “Just really unusual, don’t you think?” 

“I’ve never seen that in all the years I’ve played out here,” Jacobsen said. “Never seen a player withdraw and hang out. Look at him, there’s the limp you can see on his bad knee.”

Indeed there was a limp, as Sabbatini appeared to be favoring his right knee. Earlier in the round, he played the front nine at three-over, double-bogeyed the 10th, bogeyed the 11th and double-bogeyed the 13th before withdrawing. 

After the round, Sabbatini nor Lahiri talked to reporters. Last week, after shooting a first-round 65 at the Honda Classic, the 45-year-old Sabbatini mused about how he was “getting to that point in my game where I think I’ve gotten past where I feel like I’m, I hate to say it, truly competitive out here.”

“There’s too many guys out here that have much more firepower, so I’ve just got to kind of pick and choose my way around the golf course, so to me it’s become more of a chess game and less about throwing some darts out there,” said Sabbatini, who won the silver medal at last year’s Olympic golf tournament. “I think I’ve just learned to maximize what my abilities are and stay away from my inabilities.” 

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