Day 2: TPC Sawgrass
A fairly early start on Saturday started with a very pleasant breakfast at the Marriott after which we were transported to the Players course. We were luck with the weather! The forecast was not great a couple of days before but it sorted itself out on the day.
The clubhouse is stunning but more of that later with our tour after the round.
As there was no official tournament that day Martin and I decided to move back and play the blue tees. Let's just say it suited one of us more than the other. The blues were 6,670 with a slope rating of 149. It was really tough. Here's the card we were given. We were allocated hole 13 as our starting hole. Unlucky for some but not for my young friend!
The 16th, 17th and 18th holes are spectacular. As you can see from this video of me planning my second shot to the 16th, the fairways were immaculate.
I had a little over 100 yards for my third shot which gets tricky with the tree if you're too far left and impossible for obvious watery reasons if you're too far right. Note the view of the 17th island green in the background.
As expected, the 17th was a real challenge and I blame poor information from our caddie (just joking Darin) because it obviously couldn't have been our fault. Martin flew the green so I took one club less to account for it and came up short. We both parred it with our second tee shots. Incidentally, Monty had told us the night before that of his 70 tee shots at the Players he had only missed the green once. Looking at that daunting tee shot it's a very impressive statistic.
This is a view from behind the tee where it's a bit more elevated. Once you're on the tee itself and lower down it looks a lot harder!
This is from the 17th back tee and is all you can see of the green from the tee. The pin was just a few paces from the back.
The 16th is hard enough although we both had decent birdie putts. The 17th is daunting and then you step up to the 18th tee which is very tricky. Options are to go right and risk heading into the trees or try to cut a bit off the corner of the water. Sadly we both ended up in the drink having tried to cut off too much. I should definitely have headed right!
Around our half way point we were each handed a comprehensive lunch box.
Unfortunately for Martin a raccoon ran off with part of his.
As well as the raccoon we also watched a very large bird of prey that seemed very interested in events below.
At this point I could include loads more picture of the course but have probably overdone it anyway. I'll leave you with this tee shot from Martin at the driveable par 4 12th. Our last hole. It was 330 from the tees we played. He drove the green with his best drive of the day to set up a 30 foot eagle putt. Outstanding! Even our caddie thought he was a 'player' and rightly so. Wait for the high-pitched excitement at the end.
Mementos from the course:
And there was a wedding taking place back at the hotel. Stunning venue as you can see.
From there we hit the showers and got ready for our evening tour of the TPC Sawgrass Clubhouse and dinner.