It's the ultimate in risk-versus-reward, the centerpiece of a million bucket lists, the subject of countless cheesy break-room motivational posters. It's the Island Green at TPC Sawgrass, the trademark hole of the The Players Championship, and it's the golf hole even non-golf fans can understand. As the 2023 version of The Players tees off this week, it will once again serve as either salvation or damnation for many of the world's best.
By far the oddest moment came in 1998, when a seagull apparently took objection to Brad Fabel’s ball and proceeded to steal it, and then drop it in the water:Backward chips and thieving wildlife aside, it’s worth asking whether the 17th is a fair hole at all. It’s certainly a tough one, playing at over par, and when the wind kicks up, the swirl can make challenging the pin nearly impossible.
For pros, though, the Island Green’s primary weapon is psychological torture. You can be playing the round of your life, but you know that the Island Green lurks out there, the penultimate hole of the round, waiting to devour your hopes and dreams with one wayward tee shot. The Island Green follows the par-5 16th, the easiest hole on the course, leading to a mental whipsaw — everything good done on one hole can be undone on the next.
“I have always said this: I think 17 is a great hole, but not the 17th,” Woods said in 2012. “I think it’s a perfect eighth hole, or something like that.” Some pros relish the challenge, and some even thrive on it. Rickie Fowler, in what turned out to be his career highlight to date, birdied the 17th three times on a Sunday in 2015 — once in regulation, twice in a playoff to defeat Kevin Kisner and Sergio Garcia. Seven years earlier, Garcia was on the winning side of a playoff, when Paul Goydos hit his first shot into the water and Garcia’s found land.
However this weekend at the Players turns out, the 17th will be waiting, lurking late to test the game’s best. When the tournament reaches the Island Green for the last time late on Sunday afternoon, all the questions of whether the 17th is a fair test of golf are irrelevant. At that point, it will just be the player, the pin and a whole lot of water between them. Whatever happens next, it’ll be memorable … one way or another.
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