The first round of The Players Championship is in the books, and it was an ideal day for scoring at TPC Sawgrass. The field averaged a score of 72.084 and 57 players recorded under par rounds.
Last year, TPC Sawgrass was the sixth most difficult scoring course out of 54 PGA Tour stops, behind Royal Birkdale (British Open), Oakland Hills (PGA Championship), Torrey Pines (U.S. Open), TPC Southwind (Memphis) and Muirfield Village (The Memorial).
Your leader is Ben Crane, whose last PGA Tour win came at the 2005 U.S. Bank Championship in Milwaukee. Crane put up some impressive numbers on his way to a 7-under-par 65, which was good enough for a one shot lead. Crane led the field in total distance of made putts at just under 172 feet. He also ranked No. 1 in one putts with 14. By comparison, Tiger Woods made only 35 feet worth of putts.
"This is definitely one of the better putting rounds of my career," said Crane. "Those greens out there are immaculate. I mean, they're in perfect shape, and I played in the afternoon, so I've already had a whole wave go through. The greens are resilient and still just so true.
"You get some of these downgrain putts and it just rolls like it's on the hood of your car, just so smooth going out there. It's beautiful to watch that, these balls roll."
The lead is where you want to be after the 1st round of play at The Players. In the history of the tournament, 13 of the previous 35 first-round leaders have gone on to win. The last two champions, Phil Mickelson (2007) and Sergio Garcia (2008) won the tournament.
Defending champion has not been a good position to be in, although that would mean you'd won and the previous year and took home a decent wad of cash. No past champion has ever successfully defended his Players title. The best anyone has done as defending champion is a tie for fifth. Considering the history, and the sadness displayed by Garcia following his round Thursday, it doesn't look like this statistic will change.
We know that past major champions perform well at The Players. Twenty of the past 29 winners of The Players Championship have won majors. There are 21 major champions in the field this week, who have 44 major titles among them. The major champs who fared best on Thursday were David Toms and Retief Goosen who shot rounds of 67.
Bubba Watson, who was in contention last week at Quail Hollow, also shot a 5-under-par 67 on Thursday. Watson led the field in driving distance in round 1 with an average of 317 per drive. Kevin Sutherland had the longest drive of the day on Thursday, bombing it 342 yards off the tee on No. 18.
Speaking of No. 18, the 462-yard par-4 18th hole was the fourth most difficult on the PGA Tour last year out of 972. It averaged 4.52 strokes and yielded only 31 birdies, compared with 146 bogeys, 40 doubles and eight others. During round 1 of The Players in 2009, there were 13 birdies on No. 18 with 33 bogeys, six doubles and one triple.
Germany's Alex Cejka led the field in both fairways in regulation (14) and greens in regulation (17). I can't even imagine hitting 17 greens during a round. That could mean big things are to come for Cejka. Last year's winner (Garcia) led the field for the tournament in GIR at a clip of 77.78%.
Finally, we arrive at the crown jewel of this course, as least in the eyes of television executives and those in the gallery at Sawgrass.
On Thursday, the island-green No. 17 yielded a scoring average of 3.070. There were 28 birdies, 94 pars, 13 bogies, three doubles and five triples. Twenty-year-old Rory McIlroy carded a triple on No. 17. It was his first competitive round at TPC sawgrass. The player with the most career birdies on No. 17 in Players history is Bernhard Langer with 24. Langer is not in the field this week.
There were no aces at No. 17 on Thursday, and there haven't been any since Thursday in 2002 when Spain's Miguel Angel Jimienez dropped in a hole-in-one. There are only six aces on No. 17 in the history of The Players Championship. Those lucky individuals are Brad Fabel (1986), Brian Char (1991), Fred Couples (1997), Joey Sindelar (1999), Paul Azinger (2000) and Jimenez.
There were more balls hit into the water at the par-4 fourth hole (17) than there were at the infamous island-green 17th (16) during Thursday's round.
Total Balls in the Water by Year:
Year No. of balls
2003 29
2004 30
2005 67
2006 57
2007 93
2008 65
Friday the number to look out for is 1:10 p.m., when Tiger Woods, Justin Leonard and Ernie Els depart from No. 1. Woods will be featured prominently in Golf Channel's coverage of The Players, which begins at 1 p.m.