Poor weather to add to significant challenge for Irish trio at Sawgrass

There’s a misconception about Shane Lowry that he enjoys playing in bad weather. He doesn’t.

However, like the rest of the field at The Players – the flagship tournament of the PGA Tour with its €18 million purse – the challenge of conquering the TPC Sawgrass course, with the rough at four inches in places, will be accentuated by a weather front that promises heavy rain for the opening two rounds, strong winds of up to 30 miles an hour on Saturday and a closing round in cool temperatures come Sunday.

It’s as if the weather gods are having their own take on the obscene prizemoney, with €3.3 million of it set to find its way to the winner’s bank account; yet the tournament itself, four years on since its move back to a March date in the schedule from May, provides the prospect of an intriguing contest in tough conditions with the subplot of a number of players pressuring Jon Rahm for the world number one spot for 13 straight weeks.

Collin Morikawa, Viktor Hovland and Patrick Cantlay are the men in pursuit and even the in-form Scottie Scheffler, winner of two of the last three events on the PGA Tour, has a mathematical chance to assuming the top spot.

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“Even if you’re number one, you’ve still got to perform every week. I’m chasing people myself, as well, so no, I don’t feel like I’m being chased,” remarked Rahm of staying focused on the task at hand rather than being conscious of those chasing him down.

Rory McIlroy, the world number six, isn’t a factor in that subplot of being able to return to world number one (not this week at any rate) but the bigger picture for the Northern Irishman is of getting over the line in his own pursuit of a first win on tour this year and first since his CJ Cup success last October in the early days of the wraparound season.

“I think you’ve seen the trend in golf over the years where the top guys have gotten younger and younger. Collin, Viktor, Jon Rahm, these guys coming out of college, and they’re ready to be superstars and they’re sort of candidates to be number one in the world,” said McIlroy.

“I don’t think it makes it harder to close out tournaments . . . it does obviously if the fields are deeper, but none of that’s necessarily in my control. I can’t control what those guys do. All I can do is go out and play the best golf that I can, and if that’s good enough to have won tournaments, that’s great, and if it’s not, then you have to try to make improvements and see where you can.

“I still feel like my best golf is more than good enough to win the biggest golf tournaments in the world, so I don’t worry about that,” said McIlroy ahead of the megabucks event in which Justin Thomas, last year’s winner, will bid to become the first player to successfully defend.

The best result by a defending champion is tied-fifth (Jack Nicklaus/1977; Tom Kite/1990; Hal Sutton/2001) while, in the last six attempts, only one defending champion has finished in the top-50 (Webb Simpson in 2019 when McIlroy won).

Intricate challenge

For his part, Lowry – runner-up in the Honda Classic a fortnight ago on his last tournament outing – would appear to have finally cracked the intricate challenge of Sawgrass when last year recording his first top-10 having missed the cut in five previous visits. Lowry’s tied-eighth finish a year ago would suggest he has finally found a way to navigate his way around.

Séamus Power is the third Irishman in the field, and – currently in 50th place in the world rankings and with the qualifying cut-off point for the Masters just three weeks away – in dire need of a pick-me-up. The Waterford player has missed the cut in his last three appearances on tour, having secured top-10 finishes in three of five outings before that.

For Thomas, there’s the chance to create of bit of history in staging a successful defence. The question is, why hasn’t it been done before?

“I’d say because it’s one of the deepest fields in golf and it’s really hard to win golf tournaments. The fact of the matter, it’s really hard to win a golf tournament once, and it’s really hard to win it again.

“Obviously a lot of expectations and pressure come with it, but I think first and foremost it’s how deep this field is, [including] most of the top 100 players in the world. I would say first and foremost that’s the biggest part of it.”