Tiger Woods, drunk fans, and a few other reasons to watch The Players Championship

The Players is the biggest event on the PGA Tour and the biggest moneymaker in its history returns to TPC Sawgrass after three years away. Here are a few more reasons to get into this 2018 edition.

The debate over The Players Championship as golf’s fifth major is one of the more tedious debates in a sport full of tedious debates. It’s a cool annual golf tournament that is the biggest event on golf’s biggest tour, which, oddly enough, has no control or ownership of the four biggest stops on that tour. The Players could be your fifth major, or it could not be in the same way Joe Flacco was or maybe wasn’t once an elite NFL quarterback. Some people love it and others make snide remarks. The strength of field, however, is undeniable and the course is the most recognizable venue on the schedule not named Augusta. The general public knows it and may have some history with it, or at least watching its island 17th hole.

Whatever arbitrary status you want to assign it, The Players is mostly good and this one should be especially good. Here are a few reasons why I think it will be worth watching this year.

It’s time for PGA Tour to come out of hibernation

It’s been sleepy since Patrick Reed rolled in that final putt to win the Masters. The four weeks on the PGA Tour since have been ... we’ll be charitable and call it slow. We got:

• Satoshi Kodaira winning an RBC Heritage that was tape delayed.
• Andrew Landry, a fine story but not exactly a guy the Tour is going to promote, winning the Texas Open on arguably the worst course on the schedule.
• Scott Piercy and Billy Horschel winning a two-man Zurich that lacked juice all weekend (despite, ICYMI, walk-up music).
• A Wells Fargo Championship that just sputtered along and gave us some low-grade fireworks (think sparklers and smoke bombs) with a name champion at the end.

Sure, if you’re a golf nerd, there have been things to get into and takeaways that may have scratched your itch. And to be clear, there’s been plenty of cool things happening in the game outside the PGA Tour. But we’re due for something big and exciting this week. I’m sure of it!

Duval Drunks.

The PGA Tour can walk a fine line between hosting an outdoor drunkfest and a Shooter McGavin “Damn you people! This is golf, not a rock concert!” moment. This is almost the case every week now on the PGA Tour, where partying is mostly encouraged and the grazing herds oblige, using the nearby golf tournament, which they may or may not be watching, as reason to sit outside in the sun and get drunk.

The Tour’s marquee event, The Players, is a high-profile test case of this constant line straddling. It’s not trying to be The Masters, and walking around makes you feel like they’re attempting to be the exact opposite of the staid and reserved notion of the “patron” upheld in Bobby Jones’ vision at Augusta. This event played at the Tour’s HQ and it’s their biggest event, but it’s also maybe the biggest non-Phoenix Open party on the schedule. The 17th gets notoriously raucous, and it puts some stress on this balance the Tour tries execute each week (I wrote many words about the scene after an enjoyable visit last year.)

It went sideways in 2015 when Sergio was heckled “three or four times” on every hole on the back nine on Sunday. Fans shouted during his swing, yelled for his ball to get in the water, and made him back off his shot several times, including at the 17th.

It was a mess that was overshadowed and quickly forgotten thanks to Rickie Fowler’s win, arguably the best finish in the event’s history.

Earlier this year, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan made a surprising (to those who follow this closely) tempered statement in response to players who were speaking up more often about a spate of fan behavior issues. Monahan said that, while they would monitor it closely, fans “yelling, ‘get in the bunker,’ that’s part of what our players have to accept.” My own personal quarrel is not with drunks shouting, it’s more that so often what is shouted is stupid and unoriginal and adds no value.

The merciless heckling of Sergio is an isolated, extreme case but given how many people there are around 17, and how many of them are drunk, you’re going to get idiots shouting. As an outsider, it’s a fascinating tension to watch, especially at the home of the Tour.

The money bath.

For years The Players boasted the richest purse in golf. That title has jumped around recently as the arms race between majors intensified, purse sizes started to become a thing more people talked about, and a flood of TV money buttressed the hosting golf organizations. In late 2013, it was big news when the PGA Tour and PGA of America made the joint move to bump the purses of their two marquee events, The Players and the PGA Championship, to $10 million. They even held a press conference for it!

Since then, all the majors have shot past that $10 million mark and now even the damn WGCs have $10M purses. The “richest purse” in golf title has changed hands a few times and now rests with the U.S. Open, which made the signficant jump from $10 to $12 million last year.

This year’s Players purse is up another $500k to an even $11 million. The winner’s payout is right on the cusp of the $2 million mark. For your edification, here’s your top-five payout breakdown:

• 1 — $1.98 million
• 2 — $1.188 million
• 3 — $748,000
• 4 — $528,000
• 5 — $440,000

So here’s an opportunity to watch a (likely) current millionaire play for a silly amount of money at one the richest events in the game. Every little stroke or bad bounce on Sunday is usually the difference between hundreds of thousands of dollars.

It’s the best field in golf

This boast is an annual tussle between The Players and PGA Championship. The PGA, without fail, makes sure the top 100 in the world rankings get an invite. But there’s also a swath of their field reserved for PGA pros — their members from across the country giving lessons and selling sweaters at your local course. That’s a hit to the “deepest field” framing, and a problem The Players doesn’t have — there are no amateurs, club pros, past champs with lifetime invites, or random open qualifiers.

This week we have every single player in the top 50 in the Official World Golf Rankings (update: now just 49 thanks to Paul Casey WD’ing with an injury). After that, the field of 144 is filled with a whole bunch of top-level pros competing on the deepest, most competitive Tour in the world during an era when it’s never been deeper or more competitive. There was a time when some Euros would take a pass on this event. Maybe it just didn’t work with the schedule, or maybe there was some message trying to be sent to the stateside Tour (remember when world No. 1 Lee Westwood and Rory McIlroy just skipped it in 2011). That never happens anymore, at least with the high-profile players. If you get an invite and you’re not hurt, you play.

This week we got everyone on hand and as a sign of just how deep the Tour is right now, Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods are playing in the same group. For decades, the Tour didn’t have the luxury of loading them into the same group. They were always on opposite sides of the draw, to spread out the maquee names. But opposite Tiger this week is the trio of Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy, and Justin Thomas, among other groupings. Phil isn’t needed to anchor the other side of the draw.

Everyone is here and some are bound to be involved come Sunday.

The car crash effect.

At these events, it can be fun to watch bad golf. These are often some of the most enjoyable moments of a four-day tournament with the best in the world scattered all over the course. Water on almost every hole and some notoriously difficult winds can create some car-crash conditions at this venue most know so well by now. The big numbers can pile up and while it may not be fun to be the player getting punched in the face over and over in public, it’s fun for everyone else watching.

Allegedly, the winds are much more intense and unpredictable in March, which is where this tourney is moving next year. Yay, more carnage.

Tiger.

You may have heard and read and seen, but Tiger Woods is here. He is playing in his first Players Championship since 2015. On its own, this is a reason to plug into this particular Players.