$20 where sold
# 10 — winter 2016
ARNOLD PALMER TRIBUTE TPC SAWG R ASS
T P C K UA L A LU M P U R
The Best
Gets Better Recent changes at THE PLAYERS Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass continue to reveal its brilliant design—while improving the experience for fans and players alike. Welcome back to the all-new purest test in the game
12th hole
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It is one of golf ’s finest arenas, demanding everything of those who step to meet its challenge even as it rewards them with immaculately manicured beauty and the most iconic hole in the game. For professionals, it is a sacred mountain that must be summited; for most amateurs, it is enough to have survived the attempt. For the millions of golf fans who visit, it is the best place to witness the best golfers—but then it was built for the fans, and it continues to exist for them. Always daunting, often exhilarating, occasionally heartbreaking, THE PLAYERS Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass is nothing less than golf’s truest test. So many histories begin with the phrase, “no one could have imagined what it would become…” But in the case of TPC Sawgrass, greatness was always the plan. Home to THE PLAYERS Championship and adjacent to PGA TOUR headquarters, Pete Dye’s masterpiece in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, continues to improve, and recent changes have only enhanced and reinforced its legendary status. With a grand new entrance drive, rebuilt and re-grassed greens and vastly improved practice grounds, and with significant improvements to several holes and to the grounds in general, the world-class experience at TPC Sawgrass has gotten that much better, especially for fans and pros at the upcoming PLAYERS Championship.
The original premise of the tournament and the course was always to have the ultimate golf fan experience
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“The original premise of the tournament and the course was always to have the ultimate golf fan experience,” says Matt Rapp, executive director of THE PLAYERS. “This course was built to host large amounts of people and to have them be able to watch the very best golfers in the world being tested in every facet of their game, using every club in the bag. As the purest test in golf, THE PLAYERS was always meant to determine who among the very best players in the world was controlling their ball the best, and to have everybody able to watch it happen.” To make the Stadium Course a true fan experience, not just a test for golfers, Dye and his team used significant mounding throughout the course, creating berms and rises on which fans could stand to watch the action. This year, course managers decided that some of those mounds could use a bit of re-shaping, and so grades were smoothed to allow for better access (and for more fans to watch the action), mounds were moved or enhanced for better sight lines, and new viewing areas were created to expand fan enjoyment. “When they created the original mounding, they might have made them a little too large,” says Rapp. “It was fairly steep and stair-stepped, and it made it difficult to get up. You don’t need a severe slant, all you need is a gradual slant so you can see over the person in front of you. We’ve been working on the mounding for the last 10 years or so to soften it and to make it more pedestrian-friendly. We’ve made huge advances with that for the 2017 event; the walkability of this course is dramatically better.” What that means for fans and pros alike is better traffic management on course. Specifically, Rapp says, there were “pinch points” throughout the course in places like between the sixth green and seventh tee, coming down 14 and between 12 and 14. “For marquee groups with large followings, several thousand people trying to follow them, it was difficult to get around,” Rapp explains. “Now, fans can follow that [marquee] group, easily walk up a slope and have a good vantage point. And once the shot is hit fans can quickly move on and see [the pros] hit their next shot.” If there were areas that suffered from too much action, Rapp says that, in contrast, “there were some neglected areas. Between 12 and 11, 12 and 14, 12 and 13… And some of these areas have gone from unused space to incredibly nice spots. You can put concessions, tables in the shade… Before, they just didn’t have a lot of usefulness. Now they’re great little spots.” Smoothed mounds, “pinch point” traffic relief and enhanced usability of spaces are the kinds of improvements that are enjoyed but not necessarily noticed directly, and while their impact will be felt, there are other changes at TPC Sawgrass more likely to be talked about by fans. Chief among them is sure to be the new entrance, which will be
A work in progress
the first—and one of the most significant—changes that fans will enjoy. With the entrance road redirected and with substantial shifts to the area surrounding the entryway, the clubhouse now will feature prominently from the moment fans and players head toward TPC Sawgrass. “The clubhouse in some respects seemed separated, especially from the first tee and from the practice green leading to first tee,” Rapp explains. “All of that has been transformed… Now, very shortly after turning on to Championship Way, you’ll feel like you’ve entered a golf course, almost like you’re driving down a fairway. You get a clear view of the clubhouse, you’re not looking at a lot of parking lots like it was before. Before, your first real look at the clubhouse was through a parking lot. Now you can see the clubhouse almost from the get-go, and it’s just a beautiful structure. The 17th hole and the clubhouse are the two signature items we have out here.”
Rapp says the team spoke with experts who referenced Disney and undeniable evidence that entry and exit have a huge influence on guest experience: “how long people stay, how much they enjoy their time, whether they come back, whether or not they recommend the experience to friends— all of that is impacted, believe it or not, by entry and exit.” Once guests do arrive, another change that will immediately be apparent is the vastly enhanced practice area, which will also serve an upgraded academy facility. “We totally re-did the practice grounds with the goal of making it more of a world-class experience,” says Steve Wenzloff, a vice president in construction and design services at TPC Sawgrass. “We added more visual appeal and more realistic visual elements, realistic meaning more golf-hole type elements, more like a fairway presenting itself. There are bunkers out on the range, bulkheads out there to create more visual appeal, palm trees for more visual
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The changes will enhance the course’s beauty and the fan experience
reference. They’re out there to help create some definition among a space that’s 500 to 600 feet wide. It’s easy for your eyes to get lost in a sea of green, and so we’ve broken it up with white elements of sand, brown elements of bulkheading, and trees…” “The back of the practice grounds used to be a place for the pros to escape without being seen,” Rapp says, “that area wasn’t so viewable. But it’s all changed. Now, fans will feel like they’re even more part of the tournament.” More beautiful, it’s also more inviting and more usable, Wenzloff says, adding that his focus as a golf course designer is more about usability. Dye himself says that many of the changes are aimed at making THE PLAYERS Championship even more exciting—if that’s possible. “When they reached out to me,” Dye said, “we discussed ways to improve the drama on the back nine and in particular the 12th hole. The 12th hole has always been a short par 4, and we took a look at how we could increase the excitement level out there between the par 5, 11th and the par 3, 13th holes, by making it drivable. I worked with the TOUR on the new look, adding water left of the green and redesigning the fairway strategy. A new tee was built with spectator mounding surrounding it, and we shifted the fairway bunker to the left side for a carry-over should a player choose to try to drive the green. The design grew to add more mounding around the green complex for spectators and hospitality which is a nice addition to the other fan enhancements in the area… I’ve always thought holes 11, 12 and 13 were overlooked in their importance to the tournament, especially on Sunday as a player makes the turn and gets himself into position to make a run at the title. I think the new challenges of No. 12 will add drama earlier in the round and enhance the excitement level for players and fans.”
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Other performance changes that were made include rebuilding and re-grassing the greens at TPC Sawgrass. The new Tiff-Eagle Bermuda grass should prove the best possible putting surface for the pros (and for all players), and Wenzloff says the work addresses some of the seasonal timing issues with which the maintenance team has contended in the past. “Looking at creating the best turf conditions for the tournament, we’re coming out of the winter where we’ve had play on those greens,” he says. “In a few previous years we’ve had conditions that we weren’t as happy with, and we looked at ways to combat that. One of those ways was to create additional hole locations, and some greens were expanded slightly to create those. One, it gives us more opportunities for the tournament, to evaluate whether there are new hole locations that could be used during tournaments or whether it’s more conducive to guest play. And it also gives the operations team more opportunities to handle where foot traffic occurs.” For example, he says, given the cart path location on the ninth green, “most of our traffic ingress and egress came off the back right of the green. We didn’t have a lot of flexibility there. But in addition to expanding the green and being able to change the hole location more, we filled-in a bunker off the back and converted it to fairway. “This creates a wider distribution of foot traffic because a small area is now a wider area, but the additional fairway also creates more playing opportunities for recovery shots. If somebody comes through the green and goes back there, there are numerous ways it could influence things, so it helps both factors: the competitive aspect and resort play.” While Wenzloff is a self-described “inside the ropes” guy and Rapp says he works outside the ropes, the two agree
on the change with perhaps the biggest appeal in terms of both usability and visual appeal: a new lake on No’s 6 and 7. “We looked at the area between the sixth and seventh holes,” Wenzloff says. “It was a big landform that didn’t have a lot of aesthetic value to it, and we ended up turning it into a lake. There used to be two small canals, and you’d run up to the land formation, but the two canals have been merged. The water is still where it was; it hasn’t moved any closer to the golf holes, but visually it’s stunning.” Rapp agrees: “Pete Dye said that 6 is the most beautiful hole on the golf course, and now you can actually see it and appreciate it. We haven’t changed the actual hole one lick, but you didn’t see the water from the tee box because of the foliage, now it’s incredibly visible. I think it’s going to be distracting, certainly to a resort player because now it’s a lake that’s two-thirds as big as the lake between 9 and 18—this is no small amount of water. The pros never hit it into the water there and it shouldn’t have a big impact, but visually it’s beautiful.” The fill that was taken from the landform between holes 6 and 7 was strategically used in other areas on site, including the new entry road appearance. For Wenzloff ’s part, he says the changes are right in line with TPC Sawgrass’ original intention and ongoing mission to be the best venue for fans and for players alike. To achieve it, Wenzloff ’s team consulted original designer Pete Dye, as well as past PLAYERS champions and local TOUR players. “We don’t take what Dye did for granted. It’s definitely a special design,” he says. “We all take care of it, and speaking for myself in particular I look at myself as a steward of that. But we also look at the future growth of the tournament and put the two objectives together; everything we do is to take care of the course and to improve the experience for fans and for players.” Rapp agrees and adds that the changes that were made recently have been in consideration for some time. Cleaning out his offices—which was moved as part of the new entrance construction—he says his team came to realize just how well-considered the changes are: “In going through the old files, it’s incredible how in similar ways these changes have been contemplated for 10 to 15 years,” he says. “All of the stuff we’re doing now has been stuff we’ve been through for nearly 20 years, studying the course and traffic flows. “You think about it, THE PLAYERS Championship was the very first tournament to have electronic scoreboards, LED boards, and live video, all for the fans. It was very first tournament to have the stadium ‘seating,’ if you will. This place was built as a Mecca for golf fans, and everything that we’re doing out there now just adds more polish to that diamond. It’s really spectacular, and visitors are going to be blown away.”
Sawgrass Marriott Golf Resort & Spa When visiting one of the greatest courses in the game, it only makes sense to stay in suitably top-tier accommodations. Not only is Sawgrass Marriott Golf Resort & Spa immediately adjacent to TPC Sawgrass, with its iconic golf courses (to which resort guests have privileged access), but it’s a fully comprehensive modern resort on its own, offering world-class amenities, great dining and beach access via its nearby Cabana Beach Club. A full-service spa, four pools, a bike trail and more take care of physical activity beyond golf, while a wide selection of dining and bar options and a stunning, inviting layout ensure guests can relax and share stories of their days without having to venture off property. Whether you’re on a business trip, a personal vacation or a full-fledged family getaway, Sawgrass Marriott Golf Resort & Spa is the place to stay for fans of the game. marriott.com
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