Tomorrow marks the 50th edition of the THE PLAYERS at the now legendary Stadium Course of the TPC Sawgrass, the venue for the test since 1982 (the first edition of the tournament was played in 1974). It should have reached its half-century last year, but in 2020, with the starting grid set and ordered, it could not be played due to the infamous pandemic, so the round figure of fifty editions was delayed until this year 2024.
Will this be the occasion when the great curse of this tournament is broken and the defending champion can finally retain it? It has never happened to date. For example, Tiger Woods or Jack Nicklaus, among other illustrious figures, did not achieve it. The weight of the challenge this time falls on a player like Scottie Scheffler, current World Number One and of the Fedex Cup, recent winner at Bay Hill, so we should not rule out that it happens.
All eyes are on the Texan, who we already know what he is capable of when he goes on a streak, boosts his confidence and the putter gives him a break: in 2023 he won two tournaments in a specific stretch of four tournaments played and in 2022 he won up to four tournaments in a stretch of six… There is another fact about this player that truly overwhelms: in the last fifty tournaments he has played valid for the world ranking, he has finished in the top three on twenty occasions and has added eight victories.
Scheffler has only played three editions of the THE PLAYERS so far and in his first two appearances he did not even reach the bare pass (he missed the cut in 2021 and finished 55th in 2022). However, he has already had time to leave his mark for history. First of all, obviously, because he won last year. But he also did it by chaining four rounds under 70 strokes, something that had only happened before on five occasions at the Stadium course. Steve Elkington in 1997 and Greg Norman in 1994 also won with four rounds under 70 strokes; in addition, Dustin Johnson (2019), Fuzzy Zoeller (1994) and Jeff Maggert (1994) achieved it without claiming victory. No one else.
Once again, the roster of competitors is almost unbeatable (perhaps that’s why, among other things, no one has been able to retain the title…), with 84 top hundred in the world in the arena. Only 16 are missing, eight of them are LIV players (Rahm, Hatton, Koepka, Meronk, Smith, Niemann, Herbert and Burmester) and the other eight mainly from the DP World Tour (Olesen, Rasmus Hojgaard, Lawrence, Hoshino, Perez, Jordan Smith, Bjork and Lombard). And this year we have a total of 22 debutants at the event, among whom we should probably highlight some Europeans such as the French Pavon, the Swedish Aberg, the Finnish Valimaki, the German Schmid or the Danish Nicolai Hojgaard.
Let’s go back to Scheffler to indicate that he does not escape the vertigo of the hole 17, the famous island par 3 by Pete Dye. In ten competition rounds his total on this hole is +3 and he has only made one birdie. In addition, he has thrown three balls into the water. He has not done much better on the 18th, another of the ‘coconuts’, where he throws a total of +4, a ball in the water and a single birdie in ten rounds. There is another stretch of the course where Scottie suffers, holes 13, 14 and 15, where he has only made one birdie (he did it on hole 15) and his total partial is +5. In general, the last third of the round gets uphill for him, despite the relief of the 16th, a par 5 where many birdies do fall. In these last six holes his total is +8. One last detail: in ten competition rounds Scheffler has only signed one eagle at the Stadium course, it was on hole 2, during the third round last year, just the day he delivered his best result on this course, a card of 65 strokes.
