Nicklaus hated TPC Sawgrass and made claim about | Golf News

The PGA Tour hosts its flagship event, The Players, at TPC Sawgrass this week, and the chatter heading into the event has centered on whether or not it must be thought-about a major championship.

But the event has not always been well-liked among tour members over its 49 years, notably when it debuted at Sawgrass in 1982, so a lot so that Jack Nicklaus joked that gamers needed to “bomb” the seventeenth inexperienced.

Eighteen-time major champion Nicklaus, who gained three Players titles but never led the participant revolt against Dye’s Stadium Course, which has since turn into revered as one of the fairest exams gamers face each season.

A fast look at the roll call of illustrious winners in current years exhibits the cream normally rises to the top at Sawgrass.

Forty-four years in the past, though, tour members have been mortified when they pitched up at the course for the first time it staged The Players.

“I’ve never been very good at stopping a five-iron on the hood of a car,” Nicklaus said when discussing the dimensions of the greens.

As for the par-three seventeenth gap and its peninsula inexperienced, which has turn into iconic and notorious in equal measure thanks to horrors and heroes it has created, Nicklaus made clear that most tour members detested Dye’s design.

“A lot of guys would like to put a bomb under that thing,” Nicklaus said bluntly, summing up the sentiment of tour members who have been resistant to such novel gap design.

Nicklaus and his friends grew to respect TPC Sawgrass over the years, and a lot of the current era does, too.

World No. 1 Scheffler said at his press convention on Tuesday: “I think when you look at this golf course, I think you see a variety of winners, and you also don’t see one style of player winning this tournament a bunch of times.

“When you look at the golf course, I think it’s so unique in a sense of, the way modern golf is kind of trending, I think this place, you kind of take some steps back where the areas to hit into are small.

“And there’s certain holes where you can definitely take advantage of your length if you’re a longer hitter. But there’s also some holes where you’ve got to get the ball in play, and you have to be able to curve the ball both directions.”