Tour Guide 2026: The Players Championship

There’s been a changing of the guard at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra, Fla. Jeff Plotts, after 10 years as the director of golf course maintenance operations and host superintendent of the Players Championship, retired last October.

Now stepping into the leadership role is his longtime assistant director of operations, Lucas Andrews. Born in England, the Brit has two main golf courses on his resume that will stand out to golf fans: a year at St. Andrews Links followed by 15 years at TPC Sawgrass — first as an assistant-in-training for almost nine years, then six years as assistant director of golf course operations, followed by his promotion to director of golf course maintenance operations last October. 

Not bad for a kid who got his start raking bunkers in high school because he wanted to play free golf.

Andrews goes to St. Andrews

Andrews and his family moved from England to British Columbia, Canada, while he was in high school. He felt like he “hit the jackpot” because he could work the golf season on the crew at Predator Ridge Resort in Vernon, B.C., then work the ski season as a ski instructor.

Andrews didn’t know a career in golf course maintenance was something people could pursue until some of his mentors at Predator Ridge told him he should go to the University of Guelph in Ontario to get an education in turfgrass. He graduated with honors from Guelph with a degree in turfgrass management. 

Perhaps even more important while he was there, he was offered the opportunity to intern at St. Andrews. That’s when, as Ron Burgundy from “Anchorman” might say, “Things escalated quickly.”

It was an opportunity Andrews didn’t take lightly. He took a year off school to make the most of it. One day while he was at St. Andrews, he learned a senior member of the Sawgrass grounds crew was playing the course. It proved to be a fateful day. 

“I tracked him down (Jim Abate, now a PGA Tour agronomist) on the golf course and begged him for an opportunity at an internship,” Andrews recalls. “Jim’s such a good dude. He was like, ‘If you can get your J-1 visa set, give me a call.’ I was pretty on it from that point and probably called him back quicker than he thought. To him, it was an off-the-cuff conversation. To me, it was a career-defining opportunity.”   

Building the foundation

Andrews is excited for the upcoming Players Championship, his first as the director of golf course maintenance operations. At the same time, he adds that not much has changed for him and the way he does his job.

“It’s not as earth-shattering as you would have thought,” Andrews says about serving in the lead position. “I talk a lot more than I ever thought I would in this role. I’m extremely fortunate all the other pieces on the team are the same as they were last year at the tournament, if not in more expanded roles. The support is the same, the expectations are the same, the end goal is the same. This is the foundation Jeff left for us, and we’re just picking up and moving forward from there.”

Andrews calls Sawgrass “an awesome property with an abundant amount of opportunity.” But it also comes with the many challenges such a high-profile course offers.

“No one winter is the same here in northeast Florida,” Andrews says. “We had a really good December, but (January and February) have been viciously cold.”

The weekend before the GCSAA Conference and Trade Show — as any attendee who played in the GCSAA Championship can attest — air temperatures got down to 22 degrees F, with soil temperatures as low as 32. 

“That’s not common in Florida. We probably lost four or five weeks of production,” Andrews says. “Turf production, our landscape plant materials, were decimated. We’ve been working hard to repopulate and revegetate those areas. We have a very favorable forecast ahead of us, and we’re marching on. Expectations don’t change.”    

One of the key partners of Sawgrass is Quali-Pro, who returns in 2026 as one of the course’s top sponsors of the tournament and its volunteers.

“They’ve been a core piece of our program,” Andrews says. “Where we’re at in Florida, you turn your back for a minute and we’re getting attacked by insects or weeds. We know that Quali-Pro is going to have us covered from insects to any kind of weeds that we’re going to be tackling.”

A relatively new father, Andrews and his wife enjoy bringing their 2-year-old daughter out to see the course in the weeks leading up to the Players. 

“She’s kind of been raised out here now,” Lucas says.

The same could be said about the former St. Andrews intern and Sawgrass AIT — Lucas has also been raised out there. His one piece of advice to his fellow turf professionals trying to make it? Pace yourself.

“You graduate college at 22, 23, 24, somewhere in that range. You’ve got a 40-year career ahead of you,” he says. “If you’re not a superintendent within a couple years of college, it’s OK. Build that foundation. Find yourself good mentors. Grow into yourself.

“It’s the same as going through a tournament,” he continues. “A month out from the tournament, you don’t want to be killing yourself, blowing yourself out in the first week. You’ve got to be sure that you’re there at the end of it. I think the same goes for a career. It’s just a matter of recognizing there’s a lot of opportunity in this industry. The more time you put into building the foundation … the stronger, the higher you’re going to be able to rise than you ever thought.” 

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