If Deane Beman’s 13-year-old son had
wanted to go surfing instead of catching
a quick round of golf, The Players Championship might never have gotten off
the ground. Certainly, the TPC network
of clubs would look a lot different, if it
existed at all.
Chaos theory, the butterfly effect,
nonlinear dependency – whatever you
want to call it, the random confluence of
events that resulted in what is now the
home of the PGA Tour and its marquee
tournament are enough to make you
believe in the guiding hand of fate.
The tournament we now call The
Players Championship began as a sum-
mer traveler, much like the U.S. Open
and PGA Championship (the events
commissioner Beman hoped to emulate
with his best-of-the-best field). The
first one in 1974 was wedged between
the Westchester Classic and Southern
Open in late August and held at Atlanta
Country Club, one of the players’ favorite
spots. But despite having Jack Nicklaus
rallying from three shots back in the
final nine holes to overtake J.C. Snead,
the event was considered a snoozer,
too soon after a major and too close
to football season to have much of an
impact. A move to Colonial Country Club
the next year (and having Al Geiberger
win), and then Inverrary the next (again
won by Nicklaus) didn’t help. The Tour-
owned tournament was looking like a
failed experiment.
Stadium Course designer Pete Dye has
been back to Ponte Vedra Beach five times
to soften and reconfigure the greens.
“I thought they were
going to burn me at
the stake.” — Pete Dye
The answer was to move it to the
spring, pre-Masters and post Super
Bowl, a time of when the PGA Tour
would have the full attention of fans.
Of course, that would mean finding
one spot and staying there, most likely
south Georgia, Coastal Carolina or
Florida. Orlando showed some prom-
ise. The Citrus Open could be seam-
lessly folded into this new event. Or
maybe Hilton Head, which had one of
the best golf courses on Tour in a
beautiful spring location.
