It’s the last word in threat versus reward, the centerpiece of 1,000,000 bucket lists, the topic of numerous tacky break-room motivational posters. It’s the Island Inexperienced at TPC Sawgrass, the trademark gap of the Gamers Championship, and it’s the golf gap even non-golf followers can perceive.
And because the 2023 model of the Gamers tees off this week, it is going to as soon as once more function both salvation or damnation for most of the world’s finest.
The Island Inexperienced’s light deception begins with its identify; it’s probably not an island, however “Peninsula Inexperienced” doesn’t have the identical evocative ring. It’s 137 yards, give or take, from tee to inexperienced, which means professionals can — in principle — pitch proper onto the inexperienced. Nevertheless it’s additionally solely about 24 yards huge, with little margin for error, which turns a routine pitch right into a nerve-racking prayer of a swing.
“It’s like having a 3 o’clock appointment for a root canal,” British Open champion Mark Calcavecchia as soon as stated. “You’re fascinated by all of it morning, and you are feeling unhealthy all day. You form of know, ultimately, you’ve received to get to it.”
As with a lot in golf, the elements that followers take pleasure in watching — swirling winds, slick greens, clutching tough — are the elements that infuriate professionals. And the gamers on the Gamers don’t a lot look after the Island Inexperienced, primarily as a result of it’s so unforgiving. Simply look how three of the world’s finest performed it final 12 months:
Final 12 months, the opening performed to an over-par common of three.265 strokes, with 44 gamers recording a double-bogey or worse. Brooks Koepka specifically is an astonishing 20-over-par on the Island Inexperienced since his first Gamers in 2015. Final 12 months, he put his tee pictures into the water in each the primary and second rounds, carding a double- and triple-bogey on the opening.
Koepka acknowledged final 12 months that the hardest tee shot on the PGA Tour is on 17 and famous that the second hardest is the drop zone on 17. “Yeah,” he conceded, “I have not performed that gap very effectively.”
A cheerful accident
The phrases “diabolical” and “Pete Dye” seem collectively typically; the famed golf course designer was legendary for the hidden challenges, methods and traps tucked into his programs. Strategically positioned bunkers, bushes and water problem the nerve and the ability of even the sport’s hardest gamers, and Sawgrass as a complete, which opened in 1980 simply off the coast close to Jacksonville, Florida, is a testomony to Dye’s imaginative and prescient and philosophy.
Professionals didn’t a lot look after Dye’s design; Ben Crenshaw as soon as referred to as Sawgrass “Star Wars golf, designed by Darth Vader.”
Jack Nicklaus provided a attribute bone-dry reply when requested if he favored the course: “No, I’ve by no means been superb at stopping a 5-iron on the hood of a automotive.”
Most of Dye’s depraved designs had been the results of years of deliberate planning. The seventeenth, although, took place by chance. Initially designed as a simple par-3 with a lake partially fronting the inexperienced, Dye carved into the wealthy sand round what’s now the seventeenth inexperienced — and saved digging and saved digging, utilizing it all around the course. When Dye’s spouse, Alice, a course designer in her personal proper, noticed the in-progress excavation, she urged that the lake wrap the complete inexperienced. Fifty thousand redistributed cubic yards of sand later, the Island Inexperienced was born.
Essentially the most well-known shot on the Island Inexperienced most likely belongs to — who else? — Tiger Woods, who rolled in a triple-breaker that was, to borrow a phrase from announcer Gary Koch, higher than most:
The strangest? Matt Kuchar’s backward chip. If you’re exhausting up in opposition to the water and there’s nowhere to face, you must get inventive:
By far the oddest second got here in 1998, when a seagull apparently took objection to Brad Fabel’s ball and proceeded to steal it after which drop it within the water:
(Fabel was permitted to play the ball in its authentic spot; what’s now Part 9.3 within the Guidelines of Golf doesn’t penalize gamers if the ball was moved by “pure forces.”)
Is the seventeenth a superb gap?
Backward chips and thieving wildlife apart, it’s price asking whether or not the seventeenth is a good gap in any respect. It’s definitely a troublesome one, enjoying at over par, and when the wind kicks up, the swirl could make difficult the pin practically unimaginable. That, mixed with the acute penalty for wayward tee pictures, enrages golf course purists with little persistence for island greens on the whole.
“The idea is simply terrible,” course architect Ian Andrew informed Golf Digest in 2020. “The shot has no protected play or various route. A participant can simply discover themselves ready the place they will’t end the opening and probably the spherical.” (That’s not completely true; there are legends of gamers who actually putted their approach across the gap, up the isthmus and onto the inexperienced. However that’s not advisable in a event scenario.)
For professionals, although, the Island Inexperienced’s major weapon is psychological torture. You might be enjoying the spherical of your life, however you understand the Island Inexperienced lurks on the market, the penultimate gap of the spherical, ready to devour your hopes and desires with one wayward tee shot. The Island Inexperienced follows the par-5 sixteenth, the best gap on the course, resulting in a psychological whipsaw — every thing good achieved on one gap might be undone on the subsequent. You’ll be able to’t get too snug till you get via the seventeenth, and you’ve got just one gap to get better in the event you torch it.
“I’ve at all times stated this: I feel 17 is a good gap, however not the seventeenth,” Woods stated in 2012. “I feel it’s an ideal eighth gap or one thing like that.”
Some professionals relish the problem, and a few even thrive on it. Rickie Fowler, in what turned out to be his profession spotlight so far, birdied the seventeenth thrice on a Sunday in 2015 — as soon as in regulation, twice in a playoff to defeat Kevin Kisner and Sergio Garcia. Seven years earlier, Garcia was on the successful aspect of a playoff when Paul Goydos hit his first shot into the water and Garcia’s discovered land.
Nevertheless this weekend on the Gamers seems, the seventeenth might be ready, lurking late to check the sport’s finest. When the event reaches the Island Inexperienced for the final time late Sunday afternoon, all of the questions of whether or not the seventeenth is a good take a look at of golf might be irrelevant.
At that time, it is going to simply be the participant, the pin and a complete lot of water between them. No matter occurs subsequent, it’ll be memorable … a technique or one other.
