PGA Tour messed with integrity of Players Championship

The PGA Tour eventually crowned a deserving champion at The Players Championship, but Cameron Smith’s victory will carry an asterisk with it thanks to the weather conditions at the tournament.

Nothing could be done about Mother Nature absolutely ravaging TPC Sawgrass, but decisions seemed to be made with an eye on the clock rather than the integrity of the tour’s premier event.

It took more than 55 hours to complete the first round, over three fulls days. But moving on with the second round when the conditions were so extreme was questionable at best.

The heavy rains finally let up, but Mother Nature replaced them with wind blowing 25 to 40 mph, with gusts even stronger. It turned round two into a nightmare for the 72 players on the unlucky half of the draw.

“It’s brutal, man. It’s pure luck and somewhat loss of integrity of the tournament, in my opinion,” Kevin Kisner said Saturday. And he was among the contenders.

Asked to expand, Kisner noted balls were rolling on greens from the wind, and half the field was not subjected to the conditions.

“I understand the difference in the waves, but when I got to 17 and 18, you couldn’t hardly stand up, much less hit a golf shot,” he said.

Rory McIlory said he played for 60 yards of wind on No. 17, hitting a 7-iron he normally hits 180-185 yards just 123 on Saturday.

Brooks Koepka hit an 8-iron on No. 16 205 yards downwind. He used that same club on the 135-yard 17th and came up 25 yards short and in the water.

One only needed to look at the cutline to see who was caught in the bad side of the draw. Premier ball strikers Collin Morikawa, Patrick Cantlay, Xander Schauffele, Jordan Spieth and Koepka were nowhere close to playing the weekend.

Bubba Watson had the best round during the worst conditions, and even his mind was swirling.

“You’re looking at the leaderboard thinking about the first wave of guys that didn’t even play today — I mean, a couple guys played a couple holes. Some guys didn’t tee off,” Watson said. “When you think about that, you’re just like, man, if I’d have just had a different tee time, I might have done better.”

Certainly weather and the luck of the draw are part of the game, and it often comes into play at the British Open where the wind can howl. But TPC Sawgrass is not a British Open setup.

“If we were playing links golf, you could run everything up and keep it on the ground, just kind of chip, bunt, run everything, and you’d be all right,” Koepka said.

But at Sawgrass, with water on 11 holes — including the final eight — you have to put the ball in the air.

The tour basically had three options when the tournament fell so far behind schedule: cancel the tournament, the most unappealing of the options; play as much as you can whenever you can, which is what it chose to do; or be realistic about the forecast, cancel play Friday and Saturday, and extend the event into Tuesday.

The latter was not considered, officials said. And that’s a shame, given the magnitude of the tournament, the record purse being contested and the integrity of the event.

SNGA Championship

Jackson Parrish shot rounds of 66 and 68 to finish at 10-under 134 to run away with the SNGA Championship over the weekend at Highland Falls and Palm Valley golf courses.

Parrish had three eagles over the two days and won by eight shots over Cameron Barzekoff and Josh Goldstein.

In the senior bracket, Todd Roberts finished at 5 under for a four-shot win over Glen Hogle, while Jeffrey English took the silver title at even-par 144.

Net winners included Larry Berlinger (championship), Roberts (senior) and Tom Richardson (silver).

Greg Robertson covers golf for the Review-Journal. He can be reached at grobertson@reviewjournal.com.