Best of the Players Championship: The 25 Most Dominant Performances
By Bill Felber
Peete came to the tour in 1975 at the advanced age of 32, won for the first time in Milwaukee in 1979, and came to the 1985 Players on the heels of a victory two months earlier in Phoenix.
He had no track record to speak of at Sawgrass, his seven previous appearances having produced three missed cuts and no finish higher than a tie for 29th. Through 22 rounds, his average score at the Players Championship had been 75.18.
How, in the face of all that, does one explain the week Peete enjoyed in March of 1985? He ran through the field with a 14-under par performance that was three strokes better than runner-up D.A. Weibring and seven strokes better than any of the other approximately 140 competitors.
He opened modestly with a 70 which although matching his best round at Sawgrass was good only for a tie for seventh place, three strokes behind Hale Irwin.
From there, though, Peete found his groove. He shot a Friday 69 to move within three of Weibring, backed it up with another 69 on Saturday that moved him into a tie for first, then closed with a 66 to pull away. Only Isao Aoki, with a Sunday 65, managed a better round all week…but Aoki was 11 strokes behind at the time.
Peete registered eight birdies, the last of them at the island hole 17th when he stopped an 8-iron four feet from the hole to wrap up the title. “Considering the circumstances, the greatest round I’ve ever shot,” Peete told reporters afterward.