Davis Love III has a long and personal history with The Players. He won his first Players title in 1992. Eighteen years before that, he had a lemonade stand on the second hole of Atlanta Country Club where his father was the host professional for the first Players Championship in 1974. Then it was called the TPC, which stood for Tournament Players Championship. Now, he’s working on the golf course overhaul.
“I'm a part of a team getting ready for this championship and getting ready for a renovation,” Love said on Thursday. “I really like the direction they're going and what leadership is doing.”
The multi-season project is already underway, actually. Last year, his team, in conjunction with the grounds crew at TPC Sawgrass, MacCurrach Golf, and Jeff Plotts, Head of Agronomy, transplanted a 500,000-pound live oak tree to the right of the sixth hole to provide just the right amount of annoyance to golfers teeing off. The monster tree replaced one that was removed in 2014. It’s just part of bringing the teeth back to the TPC.
While it’s not an easy track, Love has fond memories of his victories at The Players and the tournament in general.
“Not only did I just want to get in it and play in it, it was a dream to win a big tournament now that's considered a major championship,” he said.
Love eventually became one of the few multiple winners of The Players, carving out a second victory in 1992.
“It was always the toughest field, one, you know, as a rookie on Tour, it was hard to get in. I had to play great early season just to get in the tournament,” he recalled.
Love’s current mission at TPC Sawgrass is a multi-year project to upgrade what’s under the ground that nobody sees as well as modifying some other parts of the course. He also wants to bring back some of the original Pete Dye design characteristics that have been removed.
In other words, Love’s looking for trouble. Things that go bump in the night. Pot bunkers. Swales. Mounds. Sand. Things that look frightening but can be played around with the proper shot.
Meanwhile, they are doing what he called “boring stuff,” like moving cart paths and making the driving range longer.
“While we do that, we're going to rebuild the bunker on 4 while we dig the lake on 4 and put the dirt on the other side of the hole to fill in the back of the driving range,” he noted.
Working from some old photos, they have to pick a year and a look that they want. They have the 1982 look and the 1989 look. To explain the issue, Love took some old photos from two holes and put them down in front of PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan and asked him which holes were in the photos. Monahan couldn’t identify them.
“That’s the problem,” Love said.
Over time, The Quirky has been removed, and Quirky is what makes the holes memorable. Love wants to bring it all back.
There was a reason some changes were made. Some tee boxes had to become more spacious because there needs to be room for TV cameras.
“You need room for gallery and all that,” he added. “But once you get out in the fairway, you can have the quirky stuff, and especially by the greens, have the quirky stuff.”
Love knows that a big renovation will happen some time in the next three or four years. He called the date a moving target.
“The last three summers and this summer and next summer there's a scope of work, when they close for maintenance, that we're going to do to get ready whenever the big renovation happens,” he explained. “We're not going to build any new tee space on the back of the driving range, the pro end, this year, but we're going to fill in the water and be ready to do something at the back of the range.”
The issue with renovations at TPC Sawgrass is that all the work has to be done between the hosting of The Players.
“If we were going to renovate this golf course, we want to start in January and open in October-November, in a perfect world,” Love explained. “Well, they're not going to let us start until after this week. So, same thing at Harbour Town. You had to play the tournament and then go.”
Love also renovated Harbour Town Golf Links, site of the RBC Classic.
“I think Harbour Town did a better job of keeping the Pete Dye in the Pete Dye,” he said comparing the two courses. “This place -- but they both had the same thing happen -- which is green speeds speed up, flatten the greens out a little bit because the greens got faster.”
Love said the grounds crew’s biggest issue is that the water doesn’t drain off the greens.
“It's going to rain a little bit today and maybe a little bit on Sunday, and they can't get them dry like they want."
Speaking of The Quirky, there is another Pete Dye feature that Love remembers, one that isn’t here anymore. The railroad car. And a tunnel.
“I was arguing about a tunnel here, and they go, well, that's a dumb idea,” Love said. “How about there was a tunnel on 13 through a mound?”
They didn’t think that made sense. But Love went through the photos to prove he was right.
“I walked through it. Played 13, walked through the tunnel to 14,” he insisted.
“What I want to see is Pete Dye back in the golf course. It's turned beautiful green, the greens have gotten flat, some features have gone away. We've tweaked a few, put them back, like the tree at 6 or some mounding at 14, or we backed up some par-5 tees and rearranged some bunkers this summer.”
There are other changes getting made that have to do with how fans watch golf now.
The course spectator mounds were built by Commissioner Deane Beman to have a place to sit and watch golf. These days, the mounds need to be flatter to hold multistory hospitality locations.
“Pete told me one time about Whistling Straits. I said, ‘What are all these bunkers everywhere that nobody can even get to?’ He goes, ‘Oh, they're just to intimidate you. But if you look at the fairway, it's actually pretty wide,’” Love remembered. “If you look at some of those holes and you don't get distracted by the outside and you say, ‘Well, if I just hit a 3-iron down the left side of the fairway and I have an angle into the green.’”
Everyone knows they can’t go back to the first day the course opened, but Love thinks a lot of The Quirky can be returned to TPC Sawgrass. He’s on a mission to find it and put it back where it belongs.
“I just want to see the old look and the intimidating look back in the golf course.”