Best bets
5pts win Scottie Scheffler @ 9/2
1.5pts each-way Hideki Matsuyama @ 28/1
1pt each-way Ludvig Aberg @ 16/1
2pts Shane Lowry @ 19/10 Top Irish
2pts Justin Rose @ 11/2 Top English
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Once upon a time the Players Championship boasted an even stronger field than the Majors and the biggest prize fund. The money’s still great ($25m) and $4.5m to the winner tops anything the Saudi oil barons muster for its LIV rivals but the field, riven by the great PGA-LIV divide for three years, no longer matches the Majors.
In fact, apart from numerically (144 instead of 72) it’s hard to spot the difference from last week’s Palmer invitational or any of the $20m Signature events which now proliferate as the PGA’s answer to the lure of LIV.
Once again there’s no Tiger Woods, despite reports that he’s been playing well and limp-free in a pro-am at Seminole, and those who predicted we wouldn’t see the great man until Augusta may well be right.But in addition to the Palmer line-up Jordan Spieth and 2015 winner Rickie Fowler, box-office names whose golf had not entitled them to a place at Bay Hill, are back for this big week at the extended 7352-yard Pete Dye-designed Stadium course at Sawgrass.
Of course the hole everyone associates with this Florida landmark is the island-green 17th, 137 yards of what can be abject misery particularly when the wind blows.
Whether you score a one or a 12 (as Bob Tway did in the 2005 Players). it’s a hole you never forget. The right club whether it be pitching wedge or 6-iron, depending on the weather, is paramount. Get it wrong and your whole tournament can be gone.
Dubbed “the fifth Major”. by some, mainly the organisers, it has produced many great winners – Tiger twice although he wasn’t a great Sawgrass fan – yet if Scottie Scheffler wins three in a row, that will be a feat never before accomplished in a tournament that has been running at Sawgrass since 1982. But then again nobody had won it twice in a row until Scheffler did last year.
Scottie was much relieved to see Wyndham Clark’s long putt to force a playoff horseshoe round the hole and stay out. It was a tight call, far different from his first success when he had five to spare over Tyrrell Hatton, sadly barred from this year’s year’s edition because he’s a LIV rebel. As are potential winners Rahm, DeChambeau, Niemann and Koepka.
Yet it’s not so much the players as the course that makes the Players special. Not just 17 but the even more frightening 18th with nothing but water to the left and if you bale out right you’re in the rough with a big tree barring the way. We’ve had plenty of strange champions, not least the shortest hitter in the field Fred Funk aged 48 in 2005 and three years earlier a long-forgotten journeyman from New Zealand called Craig Perks who pitched in for birdie at 16, holed a 30-footer for birdie at 17, then pitched again, this time for par, at 18 after driving wildly into the trees. He never won anything again.
All sorts can win at Sawgrass, long and short, young and old, but the good news for form students is that the last five winners since it was moved to March ranked inside the world top ten.
For the 51st Players Championship there’s an extra 75 yards to negotiate and the 14th toughened up with the addition of palm, oak and native grasses to the right-hand rough. But it’s not length that wins the day. Accurate iron play and avoiding the deep bunkers can get the job done as Scheffler has demonstrated these past two years, shooting a combined 37 under with phenomenal distance control in going back to back.
Yet so far this year there’s been little evidence of that sort of quality. After a delayed start following a hand accident over Christmas, finishes of 9-25-3-11 have not been what the doctor ordered. Favourite backers have done their conkers four times in a row, yet here I am advising them to get stuck in again.
More hate mail is expected but sometimes it pays to remember that form is only temporary, class is forever. And Scheffler is at a different level to anybody else bar McIlroy and more reliable than Rory. Yes, some of his usually immaculate driving has been scruffy and some of the putting has looked suspect, but most of the others would have been thrilled with three top-12s in four starts after a long break which affected his routine.
And why should McIlroy beat him anyway? Since winning in 2019, Rory’s Sawgrass record has been spotty with two missed cuts and a T19 last time. It was not pretty at at Bay Hill where he failed to break 70 on any of the four days.
World No. 3 Xander Schauffele has hardly had the ideal preparation, out with stomach muscle injury from Kapalua to last week’s rusty comeback. Twice runner-up, he surely won’t peak until the Masters given such a lengthy layoff.
The principals at Bay Hill on Sunday, Russell Henley and Collin Morikawa, must be exhausted after such a duel and have no course form to recommend them and Ludvig Aberg was a big letdown having promised so much with his dazzling victory at the Genesis. Yet on his eighth on Sawgrass debut last year, he is probably worth another chance.
He could be top European, an honour that went to Shane Lowry last week, continuing the jovial Irishman’s grand run of form. He’s been eighth, 13th and 19th in three of the last four years and could be a bet at 19/10 to pip his pal Rory for Top Irishman. Lowry also has place chances at 35/1 on the outrights as does 44-year-old Justin Rose, T8 last week and playing his 20th Players. Only Adam Scott (23) has played more.
Rose’s T6 behind runaway winner Scheffler two years ago puts him in with a shout at 11/2 for Top Englishman. Talking of Englishmen, Laurie Canter makes his own bit of history by being the first LIV player, albeit an ex-one, to tee it up at Sawgrass. He gets in as current money leader on the DP World Tour.
But for the main danger to Scheffler I’m going for Hideki Matsuyama who loves the big occasion, plays Sawgrass well – T6 last year and fifth the year before – and has already shown the winning touch this year, and in what style with 35 under at Kapalua. This will be harder, Hideki, 20 under should get it done at Sawgrass where it’s going to be a warm, cloudy but dry week with the wind barely a factor until Saturday.
Si Woo Kim, Jason Day and Justin Thomas are all course winners commanding respect as are Clark, so unlucky 12 months ago, and Sepp Straka. But we can’t back them all and this is the week for Scheffler to beat his own record and complete the hat-trick.
Best bets
2.5pts each-way Sergio Garcia @ 14/1
2pts each-way Brooks Koepka @ 16/1
1pt each-way Tom McKibbin @ 22/1
0.5pt each-way Marc Leishman @ 28/1
view odds
If Sergio Garcia wants to join his LIV colleagues Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton in the next Ryder Cup team, a victory in Singapore this weekend to add to Sunday’s dazzling triumph in Hong Kong would go a long way towards convincing captain Luke Donald that the Spaniard still has much to offer at this late stage of his career.
Now 45, he took the field apart at Fanling, leaving players of the stature of Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau toiling in his wake in a tournament that was a great advert for the old ‘uns as Phil Mickelson’s third place at age 54 was his best since signing for LIV.
Captain Donald will be well aware that the Spaniard has scored more points than anyone else in Ryder Cup history and that he is an inspirational player and a great partner.
For years I thought Garcia was just going through the motions but since winning at his beloved Valderrama last year, he has picked himself up, got his second wind and rolled out a new model. Last weekend’s performance was staggeringly good on any level and the putter, often his Achilles heel in the past, has suddenly become as big a friend as his driving and creativity.
Back-to-back victories are rare in golf but this could be one of those occasions as Sergio is a course winner, and by five shots too, at the 2018 Singapore Open. The 7406-yard par 71 Sentosa is a fair bit longer than Fanling but again it’s a venue where strategy is the key to a winning score.
The Serapong is not a course that needs big booming drives. It’s precision-over-power week with risk rewards available. The Dragon’s Tail (holes 4-7) with vast lakes, tiny landing areas and fierce bunkering poses a serious skills test. And Garcia nearly won there again in 2023 when LIV paid their first visit to Singapore, losing out to the then massively-in-form Talor Gooch in a playoff.
That was one of three sudden-death shootouts Sergio lost with LIV before he finally cracked in his home country last July but there was a lot of negativity in Garcia’s mind then which has been superseded by the confidence and alacrity he is now displaying.
Another with tip-top course credentials is five-time major champion Brooks Koepka who was just a shot out of the 2023 playoff won by Gooch but made amends last year with a two-shot victory over Aussie duo Cammie Smith and Marc Leishman. He then declared: “I think this is the best golf course we play.” Having just won, he would say that, wouldn’t he, but this layout, designed by Californian Ron Fream in 1982, puts big demands on scrambling ability and Koepka was No. 1 in that department.
With the Masters only weeks away, Koepka will be anxious to put a W on his 2025 build-up after ordinary efforts in Riyadh, Adelaide and Hong Kong and this is the obvious place for him to up his game.
As Rahm could do no better than T10 on debut last year, the main threat to my top two may come from classy Joaquin Niemann while last year’s runner-up Leishman caught the eye in Hong Kong at the weekend. Twelfth place didn’t do justice to his golf and he is starting the year brightly, having taken sixth place in the LIV opener in Riyadh.
New signing Tom McKibbin has settled in brilliantly to the 54-hole shotgun start format with sixth and seventh placed in Adelaide and Hong Kong and is perfectly capable of springing a surprise. He’s a winner waiting to happen.
It’s a 2.15am tee-off on Friday if you’re watching in the UK so another one for night owls and a pot of black coffee. But you’ll probably still be up anyway poring over the Cheltenham form. The weather forecast is awful. Hot and humid with two days of rain followed by thunder and lightning on Saturday. Wish you were there? For $25m it’s just about worth making the effort, I guess…
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