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PONTE VEDRE BEACH, Fla. — Golf mirrors life in that often it’s simply not fair.
We present this week’s Players Championship as Exhibit A.
Depending on which side of the draw players were, their tee times very much determined their fate this week — good and bad.
Tommy Fleetwood and Tom Hoge, for example, have essentially been on scholarship this week at TPC Sawgrass. Make no mistake, both deserve due credit for the 6-under 66 they each posted Thursday during the opening round, to take a share of the tournament lead after 18 holes.
So, too, do Joaquin Niemann, Keith Mitchell and Anirban Lahiri for each shooting 5-under in their opening rounds.
But almost all of those players never had to strike a ball in the second round on Saturday, when the weather conditions were at their absolute worst for the week.
Where their respective tee times stood provided a massive advantage. Fleetwood and Hoge, for example, had such early tee times Thursday that they were among the few to complete their opening rounds on time and not become affected by weather delays.
Also, because their second-round tee times were so late, Hoge never had to play Friday or Saturday, and Fleetwood played just three holes at the end of the day Saturday to begin his second round, which he’ll complete Sunday morning.
And none from among Niemann, Mitchell and Lahiri began his second round on Saturday.
This Players Championship has been defined as much by survival as by fortune.
“That’s just the way it goes in golf — it’s kind of a strange thing in our sport, so silly that that’s even a factor, but it is,’’ Keegan Bradley said Saturday.
“You get your good ones and you get your bad ones,’’ Rory McIlroy said of the draw. “You have to believe that they all even out over the course of a year or a career, I guess.’’
Saturday began with dangerous storms that prevented play until noon and also featured plummeting temperatures and sustained winds of 25 to 30 mph with higher gusts.
Wind is a golfer’s worst enemy, and it wreaked havoc on the field Saturday with balls flying into water hazards at 20-handicapper rates.
This, too, is where the luck of the draw — or in this case, the bad luck of the draw — came heavily into play for many players.
Some top players — such as defending champion Justin Thomas, McIlroy, Dustin Johnson, Collin Morikawa, Xander Schauffele, Brooks Koepka and Scottie Scheffler — had to complete their respective opening rounds by playing the back nine at TPC Sawgrass, which is the trickiest of the two sides.
Then, as those players began their second rounds immediately after finishing their first rounds, they started on the back nine, forcing them to make consecutive trips through the most treacherous part of the golf course in the worst of the weather conditions.
The famous par-3 17th hole, with its imposing island green, was like an amusement park thrill ride with the high winds toying with players’ psyches. Hitting the green with tee shots felt like a crapshoot. A total of 29 tee shots were rinsed on 17 on Saturday.
Koepka lost two balls and five shots to par on 17 and completely derailed his chances of making the cut en route to shooting 81 in his second round.
Scheffler, who was the last man standing in victory at the Arnold Palmer Invitational last week at Bay Hill, which was set up like a U.S. Open, was cruising along in The Players Championship at 5-under as he embarked on the difficult back-nine finish to his first round.
He bogeyed 17 and doubled 18 to end his first round, went 6-over on Nos. 15-18 in his second round and staggered off the course at 2-over and on the wrong side of the cutline.
Kevin Kisner called the conditions “brutal’’ and added, “It’s pure luck and somewhat loss of integrity of the tournament in my opinion [with] balls rolling on the greens and only 72 of us playing in that.’’
When Kisner was told that the temperatures were dropping and wind was in the forecast early tomorrow — elements the players who still have to play their second rounds will have to deal with — he smiled and said, “I hope it blows like this in the morning and they freeze their butts off, since they’ve been sitting at home all day watching us in the carnage.’’
Indeed, while so many in the field were being undressed by the elements Saturday, Hoge, Fleetwood, Niemann, Mitchell and Lahiri were able to watch the carnage on TV from the comfort of their hotel rooms.
“Whenever we play until and whatever it takes … you just get on with it,’’ Fleetwood said Thursday after his first round, when asked about the impending weather issues in the forecast. “When it’s your turn to play, play. Just make sure you stay ready throughout the week. Everybody’s in the same circumstances.’’
Wrong.
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