Best of the Players Championship: The 25 Most Dominant Performances
By Bill Felber
As a callow, long-hitting youth of 28, Love had first won this tournament in 1992, beating Ian Baker-Finch by four strokes. He did it with a Sunday 67 that overcame a three-stroke deficit to Nick Faldo.
In 2003, Love remembered that winning script.
Two strokes behind Padraig Harrington and Jay Haas entering Sunday’s play, and in a three-way tie for third with Fred Couples and Craig Perks, Love fashioned the week’s low round, a 64, to blow by the field and win by six strokes.
At one point, Love ran off birdies on five consecutive holes. At 16, he hit a six-iron off pine straw to within 10 feet of the hole on the par 5 and then made the eagle putt.
Coming on a cold, blustery day and matching the best closing round in the tournament’s history, it left his fellow competitors in a state of awe.
“The best round of golf I’ve ever seen played,” said Fred Couples. “We just got run over by Davis,” said Haas, who tied Harrington for second.
The decisiveness of Love’s victory set off a flurry of speculation about whether the 1997 PGA champion would take down Woods when the two met less than a month later at Augusta National. In fact, they tied – for 15th place, nine shots behind that year’s winner, Mike Weir. At the Players, Weir had tied for 27th.