Best of the Players Championship: The 25 Most Dominant Performances
By Bill Felber
With Tiger Woods sitting out the event for the first time in his pro career, the 2008 Players lacked some of its usual star power. Still the field featured eight former champions, among them Phil Mickelson, Davis Love III and Adam Scott. It also included the consensus best non-major champion to that time, Sergio Garcia.
In the end, it was Garcia who would persevere, surviving an opponent’s critical missed putt plus a sudden death playoff in the process.
Garcia set the pace with a Thursday 66, but a pair of 73’s dropped him to third, three strokes behind steady journeyman Paul Goydos and two behind Kenny Perry, entering the final round.
Playing through a challenging wind, Goydos and Perry both struggled. By the seventh hole Garcia had caught Perry and closed within a stroke of Goydos. A Goydos bogey at 15 created a tie at five-under, but the overnight co-leader birdied 16 to re-take a one-stroke lead. When Garcia parred the 17th and dropped a 7-foot par putt at 18, the issue came down to whether Goydos could par in to hold his lead. He left himself a 15-foot par putt on 18 and failed to make it, setting up the tournament’s first playoff in more than two decades.
Under newly adopted rules, the sudden death playoff began at the island green 17th. Goydos, playing first, faced the additional pressure of knowing he had dunked his Thursday shot on the same hole. In the playoff, this time facing 30 mph winds, he did it again, his wedge coming up short.
Garcia, also opting for a wedge, struck his within four feet of the cup and easily two-putted for the victory.