With its status as the PGA Tour’s flagship event and sitting marginally beneath the four Majors in prestige, it comes with the territory that The Players Championship offers one of the sternest tests in golf.
That’s down to factors including the general pressure of the occasion and the strength of its fields. However, the course itself and how it is set up for the tournament also play a big part.
The Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass is a Pete Dye masterpiece, which challenges players’ ability as well as mental toughness. One reason is the holes don’t favor one style, with precision the order of the day on some and power more appropriate for others.
Meanwhile, competitors are faced with generally narrow fairways – including one with an overhanging oak tree – deep bunkers and plenty of water. On that subject, there’s one of the most notorious holes in golf, the island green of the 17th, where over 1,000 balls have found the bottom of the lake at the tournament since records began being kept in 2003.
The greens at TPC Sawgrass present another major challenge, typified by undulating, lightning-fast surfaces. The speed of greens is measured using a stimpmeter – a device that sees the user roll balls down an incline at a specific angle onto a flat part of the green and record the average distance they travel in feet, with that number given as the green speed.
Per the USGA’s Stimpmeter Instruction Booklet, “Stimpmeter readings on American golf courses generally range from 7 feet to 12 feet” and, not surprisingly, most regular PGA Tour events are either close to or at that higher number.
However, The Players Championship is no ordinary PGA Tour event. As a result, the greens of The Stadium Course generally have a stimpmeter reading of 13, and that’s reportedly the case for the 2025 tournament, where Scottie Scheffler is aiming for an unprecedented third successive title.
If there’s any consolation for the 144 players in the field, it's that, even with that daunting prospect, the greens are unlikely to be as tricky as they were in the 2016 edition. Back then, there was controversy during the third round thanks to the speed of the greens, resulting in 149 three-putts.
That came after some record scoring in the opening two rounds, prompting the PGA Tour to toughen things up for the following day. However, a stimpmeter reading of 14 – combined with unexpectedly windy conditions – proved a step too far, with Rory McIlroy, who finished T12 that year, saying the greens were "borderline unfair on a few holes."
While that edition was an extreme example, TPC Sawgrass can be relied upon to provide a big challenge when The Players Championship comes around each year, and its unusually fast greens are among the main reasons.
