Golf Players Championship: Philip Reid reports on how a new vision for Sawgrass will make the historic course even better

Things change, and time moves on. When the Players Championship returns next year to the TPC at Sawgrass, in a new May date, the course will have undergone a serious makeover. The nip-'n'-tuck surgery won't be as much to do with added length, rather a project that involves rebuilding the fairways and greens to make them drier and replicating the conditions envisaged by its designer, Peter Dye, when he created the Stadium Course a quarter of a century ago.

Yesterday, indeed, Dye was out and about on the course, watching and learning. On Wednesday next, the old clubhouse will be closed and torn down to be replaced by a bigger, Mediterranean-style clubhouse that will add approximately 25,000 square feet of space. On April 3rd, the course will close; it is due to reopen in November, when the ambitious project is scheduled for completion.

Sitting in an office in the clubhouse that shortly won't exist, David Pillsbury, the president and CEO of PGA Tour Golf Course Properties, is passionate about what is evolving at the TPC at Sawgrass.

"This started out as a bold, daring and controversial vision (of Deane Beaman, former tour commissioner) over 25 years ago, which in our country is a long time. That's history. The stories that have been built by the Players Championship here over the past 25 years are what legends are made of, and that's what this place reeks of.

"Our responsibility is to figure out how to take the last 25 years and carry that legacy forward for the next 25 years, and do the things that need to be done here to elevate the Players Championship and everything underneath to the next level (to that of a major)."

While the clubhouse, which will cost $16 million, is one important part of upgrading the tournament, the changes to the course relate more to conditioning rather than going the route of adding yards. In conducting research, Pilsbury's team discovered "the enemy to low scores here was moisture".

So, the answer was to undertake a project in which some 20 acres of sod are removed, amounting to 25,000 tonnes of dirt, the equivalent to seven miles of dump trucks, and replacing the material with the same amount of sand.

In addition, 10 miles of drainage and airrigation system will be developed. Also, a state-of-the-art, mechanical drainage system will be installed under the greens to hydrate in dry weather and vacuum water in wet weather. This will ensure consistently firm playing conditions for the Players Championship and year-round for resort guests.

"Pete's turning this (course) back to its original, to make it play strategically. This golf course is about shot angles. It's about attack angles to the green, about making players think about what they are hitting off the tee," said Pillsbury.

All of these changes to the TPC at Sawgrass come at a time when - indicative of the ever-growing influence that Irish businessmen have in the golfing world - a Dublin-based property group, RQB, led by investors Paddy Kelly, Niall McFadden and Paul Pardy, has contracted to purchase the Sawgrass Marriott and Spa resort in a deal worth €165 million ($200 million). The resort controls 85 per cent of the tee-times on the Sawgrass Stadium and Dye Valley courses.

"We're thrilled that RQB has secured the purchase and sale contract," Pillsbury said, adding: "Our visions, the PGA Tour's and RQB's for Sawgrass and the Players Championship, is to continue to elevate this tournament, sequencing the majors properly, and taking the experience to a (new) level. It gives us the ability collectively to make the investment necessary to really and truly make this a landmark for golf in the world. The relationship has just begun."

During the next three years, the hotel - under RQB - will undergo a refurbishment and extension, increasing the number of rooms from 508 to 612.

"What we have to do with the hotel is bring it up to the standard that this facility is going to be, and that's going to be a very significant challenge for us," said Paul Pardy, chief executive of RQB.

"We have to build really high-end condominiums where you are treated like royalty . . . there is a fantastic opportunity for European golf tourists to come to this resort and the message is only getting out, you are playing on the home of the 'fifth' major."