Sawgrass (East & West)

Mention Sawgrass and the Players Championship at the start of the golf season and you immediately think of the par three 17th hole at the TPC Stadium course. It’s only right that such an iconic hole on such a well known course should be associated with the prestigious Players tournament but few will realize that Pete Dye’s layout was not the first to host the competition.

That inaugural honour falls to Atlanta Country Club but Sawgrass Country Club is where the Players was held for five years from 1977, at a time when the TPC was still an undeveloped swamp a couple of miles to the south of the property. The competition threw up winners in the shape of Nicklaus and Trevino during its five-year tenure over Ed Seay’s East and West nines at the Country Club before it moved to the newly constructed TPC in 1982.

Not that the Country Club just rolled over and died with the loss of one PGA event, far from it. Today, they have a fantastic 27-hole facility – the South nine superbly complements the East and West – laid out within a private residential estate that also includes a Tennis Centre and Beach Club, proving that life really does go on once a golfing road show has moved on to another location.