The deepest field in golf, playing for the most money, at the Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass is almost always a recipe for tasty storylines as the week of The Players Championship unfolds.
How could it not, when throwing the best of the best in one 144-player field, dangle $25 million in front of them ($4.5 million for the winner, plus a chunk of 750 FedEx Cup points) and do it on the thrills-and-spills course designed by Pete Dye.
The 2024 Players Championship has one of the most pulse-pounding endings in recent tournament history, with Scottie Scheffler matching the tournament record for the final round by a winner with a 64, then waiting until Wyndham Clark, Brian Harman and Xander Schaufele, all with a chance to catch him, faltered on the last two holes.
![Scottie Scheffler shakes hands with the championship trophy with Past chair members of the tournament after the fourth and final round of The Players Championship PGA golf tournament Sunday, March 17, 2024 at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. Scottie Scheffler won at 20 under par and is the first defending champion in the 50 year history of the event. [Corey Perrine/Florida Times-Union]](https://sportsalertnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/3a9686b1ccb5fb1d18d05cf6fc23c3a3)
There’s never a guarantee that the desired scripts come to pass, which is one of the charms of The Players and its home, the Stadium Course: since it’s open to any style of play, the only player it favors is the one playing the best and it doesn’t matter how he gets it done.
The 1997 Players included the shooting star that was Tiger Woods in the same field with 18 other future members of the World Golf Hall of Fame, a year after Fred Couples out-dueled Colin Montgomerie and three years after Greg Norman and Fuzzy Zoeller played a game of “how low can they go.” But Steve Elkington sucked all the drama out of the week with four rounds in the 60s and won by a record seven shots.
The 2006 Players had major champions Sergio Garcia, Vijay Singh, Henrik Stenson, Mike Weir, Retief Goosen, Jim Furyk, Jose Maria Olazabal, Ernie Els and Phil Mickelson in the mix on Sunday. The winner: Stephen Ames, by six shots.
Consider the first-round leaderboard of the 2018 Players: Patrick Cantlay, Dustin Johnson and Matt Kuchar were tied for the lead. Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, Stenson, Schaufele, Adam Scott, Tommy Fleetwood, Jason Day, Sergio Garcia and Billy Horschel were all within four shots. But another player tied for the lead, Webb Simpson, sprinted past everyone with a 63 in the second round and cruised to a four-shot victory.
On the other hand, it could be another finish such as last year. Or, as in the 2015 Players when Rickie Fowler played the last four holes at 5-under to make a playoff, then beat Garcia and Kevin Kisner in four extra holes. Perhaps another playoff, as in 2008 when Garcia stuffed his tee shot to within 4 feet and Paul Goydos found the water at No. 17.
Here are five storylines for the 2025 Players. But keep in mind anything is possible:
Can Scottie Scheffler three-peat?
Scheffler became the first back-to-back winner in the history of The Players Championship, something Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods never did. Naturally, thoughts turn to the possibility of winning three in a row.
Nicklaus won three Players, but none at the Stadium Course and Woods, Hal Sutton, Davis Love III, Fred Couples and Elkington have won two, but in non-consecutive years. It’s a hard tournament to win, given the field and the course, and it’s harder still to win two.
Scheffler seems to have discovered the cheat code for the Stadium Course. It’s actually not that complicated: score on the par-5 holes and the short par-4s (Nos. 4, 6 and 12) and avoid disaster elsewhere.
In his two victories, Scheffler is a combined 37-under par, 26-under on the par-5s and the short par-4s. Scheffler did not make a bogey on a par-5 hole either year and has made only one bogey on the three par-4s, at No. 6 in 2024.
If not Scottie, then who?
Three players to watch:
Ludvig Aberg: The birdie machine from Sweden took to the Stadium Course like a duck to water last year. He shot three 67s and finished solo eighth at 14-under. Only a second-round 73 kept him from contending deep into the weekend. He finally won his second tournament at the Genesis Invitational, 15 months after his first title at the RSM Classic, and if he gets hot, watch out.
Tommy Fleetwood: The guy has a love-hate relationship with the Stadium Course. He’s made six of seven cuts, posted two top-10 finishes but has faded on the weekend. He has a first-round scoring average of 70.14 but a fourth-round average of more than two shots higher at 72.33. He’s playing well in the early going of the 2024 season on both sides of the Atlantic and would be a popular winner at The Players.
Maverick McNealy: He was expected to be a Tour star long before the past four months but seems to have found a formula that always works best on the Stadium Course, hitting greens and making putts. Through the Genesis Invitational, which was his to win until Aberg went nuts on the final six holes, McNealy made nine cuts in a row with five top-10s, six finishes of 17th or higher and his victory at in the RSM Classic at the Sea Island Club.
Will an international player win The Players?
Since Garcia won the 2008 Players, international members of the PGA Tour have won nine of 16 tournaments, including four in a row from 2008-2011 and seven of 10 during one stretch. Seven countries have been represented as Players champions during that span, Spain (Garcia), Australia (Jason Day and Cameron Smith), Korea (K.J. Choi and Si Woo Kim), Sweden (Henrik Stenson), South Africa (Tim Clark) and Germany (Martin Kaymer).
The tide certainly has swung to international players in the early weeks of the PGA Tour season. When Aberg won the Genesis Invitational, he became the sixth international winner in the first seven events, and in a trend that bodes well for Europe in the 2025 Ryder Cup this fall at Bethpage, the list also included Thomas Detry (Belgium), Rory McIlroy (Northern Ireland) and Sepp Straka (Austria).
Will Stadium Course changes affect scoring?
A total of 77 more yards have been added to the Stadium Course through the lengthening of the par-5 second, 11th and 16th holes, and the par-4 sixth hole. In addition, a large oak tree has been transplanted to a spot forward and to the right of the sixth tee, replacing one that became diseased and had to be cut down in 2014.
Will it matter?
No. 2 is now 555 yards, No. 6 413 yards, No. 11 573 yards and No. 16 538 yards (depending on weather and wind, the Tour rules staff can adjust those distances). Last year those holes were four of the six easiest on the course and yielded only 24 double bogeys. By contrast, No. 18 alone had 24 doubles and No. 4 had 26.
The distance is not likely to hamper players who seem to be getting longer all the time. But changes on two of the holes might matter more than distance: the second tee was shifted a bit to the left to try to encourage players to hit a big draw off the tee (then have to hit a cut into the green, as Pete Dye intended) and the tree at No. 6 will get in players’ heads as they debate whether to hit over it with a draw or bore a 3-wood or long iron low.
Will Jay Monahan have big news?
The first part of Players week could be dominated by whatever transpires in PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan’s traditional news conference on March 11 at The Players Media Center.
The burning issue is whether he will have anything new to report on the potential merger of the Tour and the LIV Golf League. Monahan has met or played golf with President Donald Trump twice since his election and Trump’s promise to intervene on behalf of bringing golf’s warring factions together.
Woods certainly indicated that an agreement might be coming “quickly,” to use his word when he appeared on the CBS telecast of the Genesis Invitational.
“It’s going in the right direction,” Woods said. “It’s been heading in the wrong direction for a number of years. The fans want all of us to play together, the top players … we’re going to make that happen.”
The Players Championship has been hurt more by the absence of LIV players such as DeChambeau, Koepka, Smith and Joaquin Niemann than the major championships, which have allowed them to play if qualified as past champions of through the world golf rankings.
Monahan suspended Tour members who defected to LIV, which means past champions Garcia, Smith, Kaymer and Stenson have been barred from the tournament.
What better place to announce a definitive agreement, if all parties are ready to move forward, than at The Players?
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Players Championship: Five storylines to watch at TPC Sawgrass Stadium
