What would a 10-handicapper shoot at Sawgrass from The Players Championship tees?
If we were to set out the guidelines for this let’s settle on what the playing conditions are. It’s a sunny day in March, there’s not enough wind for it to be a factor, there are no crowds to contend with BUT you do have to play the course off the tournament tees.
To give us some kind of idea, if your Handicap Index is 10.0 then you will receive 19 shots off the back tees at Sawgrass. For Augusta National that figure would be 17, for the Old Course at St Andrews it would be 12.
So we’re already talking about a round that might add up to 91 strokes and that’s before we take into account the possibility of something horrific happening. We all know about the water on 17 but the bad news is that you will also face water on all the remaining holes.
And on greens that will be Stimping at something like 13 which is so far removed from greens that most of us putt on every week.
From the opening tee shot you will be likely hitting away from your preferred line and therefore playing yourself into trouble. If you do keep your ball dry then you won’t lose too many balls but you might be spending a lot of your day in the Bermuda rough, pine straw or in the penal sand.
You will be presented with just two par 4s under 400 yards with the first of those coming at the 6th. If you have come through the opening stretch of holes relatively unscathed then this will certainly catch your attention.
A new slanted oak tree has been installed this year to appeal to Pete Dye’s vision of deception and the quirky. Here the tree was planted first, at a cost of something like £500,000, and the tee box came second.
It has a high point of 30 feet so you will be forced into playing the correct shot which is all well and good for the Tour pros who can flight the ball this way and that – but is a lot harder for the 10-handicapper who will likely be heavily reliant on their driver and who will not fancy a 3-wood.
Where we probably don’t appreciate the Tour players’ skills is their ability to get the club on the ball from around the green. If you are a 10-handicapper because you can’t chip very well then you will be toast here.
There are endless swales and false fronts around the greens which will make you look very silly as chips will be repeatedly fluffed and flubbed, only to leave a similar shot again.
I know this because I have no short game and I played Sawgrass in 2007, when my handicap would have been 10. I wasn’t playing a lot of consistent golf at the time and was therefore streaky – which is another word for occasionally dreadful.
We were off the tees of the day so around the 6500-yard mark so already we were getting the benefit of playing a course around 800 yards shorter than what The Players is.
I do remember being able to get alongside the par-5 9th in two, and writing down a six, and having a wedge into the short 13th but most of the day was a succession of mid irons and hybrids.
So, off the tips, you would be hitting a lot of club in and/or struggling to reach a lot of the 4s. The 6th and 7th could make a real mess of your scorecard and much of your day would probably be spent hitting away from the water/trouble and therefore then chipping towards it.
Aussie Marc Leishman was once asked how a 10-handicapper might fare and he replied: “120 – my dad’s a scratch and he couldn’t break 95 here.”
If you were playing here with a handicap of 10 then you will spend a long time thinking and obsessing about the 17th hole.
I had six weeks to build up to it and I spent time with a golf psychologist, hit a lot of 9-irons and wedges at the local driving range and, for some reason, bought an entire new outfit for the occasion.
The look across to the island green is one that will never leave me, the putting surface first coming into view halfway up the 16th.
Standing on the 17th tee I was on a nice run of three pars in four holes having spent most of the early part of the morning chipping out sideways and then not getting within 20 feet with anything from off the green.
I didn’t have a single birdie, spent far too much time with my head in the packed lunch that the club had given us and then let myself down terribly in my big moment.
My first shot at 17 hit the bleachers, not a terrible connection with my wedge (it was thin) before rebounding 30 yards back in my direction, almost sticking a metaphorical two finger back at me.
Now freaked out I somehow missed the green left which, despite it sitting clearly on the bank, I declared lost as a) I wanted another go at the tee shot and b) I genuinely don’t think I had the skillset to keep a chip on the green.
My next attempt did find the putting surface, from where I took the most predictable three putts.
I knew I could take a double-bogey six on the last and just about break 90 so I did just that, pathetically advancing the ball up the right-hand side of the hole and never once getting the ball back into play.
The 18th, for my money, was the hardest hole on the property and the thought of needing to make two solid swings and secure a par four to win the tournament is almost unthinkable.
So, to answer the question: what would a 10-handicapper shoot?
Throw in the back tees, the subsequent tweaks to the course and the enormity of the whole thing and I would go with at least 105, probably more.
I may well have elevated the whole experience in my fragile mind back in 2007 but even I could square it away that this was a very boozy press trip and, whether you scored 12 or 32 Stableford points, nobody could care less.