Golf

McIlroy and Lowry eye return to winning ways in 50th edition of The Players at TPC Sawgrass

Defending champion and favourite Scottie Scheffler arrives on the back of lifting Arnold Palmer Invitational trophy last week

Rory McIlroy during a practice round on the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass on Tuesday before The Players tournament in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. Photograph: Jared C Tilton/Getty Images

Philip Reid
Wed Mar 13 2024 - 19:52

The bells and whistles are just that bit louder and everything just a little bit more showy at TPC Sawgrass for the 50th anniversary staging of The Players, which — for Rory McIlroy — has provided a showcase for how the PGA Tour’s evolvement with fans and for the tour card-carrying players is headed.

The world number two took part in a media scrum on the eve of the $25 million tournament and talked of how the brave new world for the PGA Tour can take a leaf from Formula One and another from the ATP, the men’s tennis circuit, in finding its way forward which — with more limited fields — would also upset a large segment of the tour’s membership.

“When you’ve got a members’ organisation that’s been in existence for 60 or 70 years, and the first mantra of that organisation is playing opportunities, whenever people are perceived to have playing opportunities taken away from them, they’re not going to like it.

“I can understand that, absolutely. I think it’s just the tour has been a certain way for so long, but I also think that the tour hasn’t necessarily evolved with the changing times to make it a more compelling entertainment product and sort of trying to fit in with the sort of modern media and sports landscape,” claimed McIlroy.

READ MORE

“I think the more churn the better ... this is supposed to be the most competitive golf tour in the world, and I think you should need to have to prove yourself over and over again. I don’t want to take from other sports, but you look at tennis, for example, they have a one-year rolling ranking, not a two-year rolling ranking like we have in the OWGR [Official World Golf Ranking] and I think it incentivises the players not to get complacent basically, and I think that’s really what I’m trying to talk about.”

On a more personal note, The Players presents McIlroy with another opportunity to get back to winning ways. His only win so far this year came in the Dubai Desert Classic on the DP World Tour and his pursuit of a win on the PGA Tour so far this season has been undone primarily by poor approach play with his irons.

McIlroy’s tied-21st finish in the Arnold Palmer followed another tied-21st place in the Cognizant Classic in recent weeks and he spent the past few days in advance of The Players — which he won in 2019 — working on his iron play.

“I have this amazing feeling with my woods at the minute. But when I try to recreate that feeling with the irons, it starts left and goes further left. I think it’s to do with you turn harder with a wood and you’re sort of clearing harder, and then I think sometimes it’s a feeling at the top in transition, and when I try to do it with an iron instead of a wood, it just sort of drops behind me.

“I love this feeling of firing my right arm down the target line, and I can do that with my woods really well, but then when I try to do that with my irons, the club face closes over and goes left.

“It’s almost like two different swings. I have a swing thought for my woods and I need a different swing thought for my irons, and that’s what I’ve been working on over the last couple days,” admitted McIlroy who has those swing thoughts in his head just a month before again going in quest of that missing piece of the Grand Slam at the Masters.

If McIlroy is waiting for his iron play to start matching his woods and putter, Shane Lowry — on the evidence of the past two weeks, where he finished fourth in the Cognizant and third behind Scottie Scheffler in the API — is coming into The Players in the type of form that should again put him in contention. Lowry’s best finish in the tournament was a tied-eighth finish in 2021.

Scottie Scheffler of the United States celebrates with the The Players trophy in 2023. Photograph: Jared C Tilton/Getty Images

Lowdown

Purse: €23 million (€4.15 million to the winner)

Where: Ponte Vedra, Florida

The course: TPC Sawgrass — 7,275 yards, par 72 — is a so-called “stadium course” which features a large amount of purpose-built mounding around the layout to facilitate spectator viewing. Designed by Pete Dye with input from his wife Alice in the creation of the famed 17th hole island green, the philosophy includes deep bunkering and notoriously small greens which place a particular emphasis on approach irons, while Dye’s clever tracking around the former swamp encourages players to work the ball both ways off the tee. It has traditionally made for a stern examination and past winners include both long-hitters and also those more inclined to strategically navigate a way around the course.

The signature hole is the par-3 17th over water to an island green but it is part of a very strong closing stretch that also includes the risk-reward par-5 16th, which has water down the right and in play around the green. The par-4 18th has a crescent fairway that works its way along a lake which has water in play all the way up the left-hand side of the hole.

The field: Scottie Scheffler, who enjoyed a timely return to winning ways in the Arnold Palmer Invitational last week, is the defending champion. There are 23 rookies (in terms of playing in The Players) in the field which is reflective of the wide spread new talent finding a way on the PGA Tour, including those who earned their playing rights via the DP World Tour (among them Matthieu Pavon and Bob MacIntrye) while breakthrough tour winners Jake Knapp and Austin Eckroat are also playing for the first time. World number one Scheffler and Rory McIlroy — who missed the cut a year ago — headline the strong field. The past four winners of The Players have all come from inside the world’s top 10.

Playoff holes (if required): Three-hole aggregate score: (16-17-18), then sudden death 17-18-16.

Quote-Unquote: “It’s nice to be number one. I would much rather be number one than number two, but in my day-to-day life, it doesn’t really affect anything. It’s probably a lot harder to stay at number one than it is to get there, and so if it’s something that’s going to occupy a lot of my thoughts, I don’t think that’s a very good thing. So when it comes to tournament weeks, being number one I don’t get any extra strokes, [it] doesn’t do anything for me starting a tournament, and so it doesn’t really matter at the end of the day.” — Scottie Scheffler on being world number one.

Irish in the field: Rory McIlroy is grouped with Jordan Spieth and Viktor Hovland (off the 10th at 12.35pm Irish time); Séamus Power is with Grayson Murray and Francesco Molinari (off the 10th at 5.18pm) and Shane Lowry is in a group with Tony Finau and Will Zalatoris (off the 1st at 6.02pm).

Betting: No surprise that the market is dominated by defending champion Scottie Scheffler, who — on the back of his win in Bay Hill — is a strong favourite priced at 11-2 with his new mallet putter proving to be a winning fix. Rory McIlroy is next in the market at 16-1 while in-form Shane Lowry — fourth and third in his last two events — has dropped to 33-1. There are a couple of worthy each-way looks: Rickie Fowler is a past winner and available at 125-1, while Nicolai Hojgaard is also 125-1.

On TV: Live on Sky Sports Golf from 11.30am.

Philip Reid

Philip Reid

Philip Reid is Golf Correspondent of The Irish Times

LATEST STORIES