Players Championship: Flushed or Shanked?

Before I begin my rant, I would like to congratulate Si Woo Kim on his win at the Players Championship. Kim is the youngest player to ever win the Players and he did it in a very respectable fashion. He is a bright young player, and this win is obviously the biggest of his career.

However, for me personally, this year’s playing of the championship was rather boring. It is constantly held to the “fifth major” standard, and it should carry such major storylines, but this year’s tournament yielded an extremely weak leaderboard come Sunday afternoon. Players such as Kim, Ian Poulter, Louis Oosthuizen, and Kyle Stanley were battling it out for the trophy as opposed to some of the world’s top players. So where were some of the world’s best golfers? Spieth missed his third cut in four tries at the Players. Previous champs, Jason Day and Rickie Fowler, shot 80 and 79 (respectively) and were never a factor in the tournament anyways. Rory was making headlines for all the wrong reasons, with news breaking of him scheduling a MRI for his back on Monday. He was well off the pace after the cut, and an unsuccessful moving day left him no shot of winning. DJ finished best out of the elite golfers, firing a 68 on Sunday for a backdoor T12, but he was never in the hunt for the trophy either.

As for the winner Kim, he was essentially on cruise control for the entire day. For a second, it looked like Poulter was going to make a charge on the back nine, making birdie on 11 to move to just one back. However, he bogeyed 12 and never made another move. Aside from that, no one really seemed like they wanted the trophy, with the exception of Rafa Cabrera-Bello (his 2-2-4 finish on holes 16, 17 and 18 was absolutely unreal), and Kim was able to coast to a three shot victory by parring the last nine holes. Kim really didn’t have a signature shot to associate with his victory. 2015 winner, Rickie Fowler, hit a string of unbelievable shots on the 17th, and 2016 winner, Jason Day’s, record tying 63 highlighted a wire to wire victory for him. A string of pars for a player who won with a relatively uneventful 69 just doesn’t have the same level of memorability to me.

Maybe I’m just greedy, but for a tournament to live up to being golf’s “fifth major”, it needs to carry the hype of being a fifth major. For me, an uneventful Sunday with a relatively weak winner just doesn’t do the trick, and it definitely took away some of the hype of the tournament, especially after the results from the past two years. Nicklaus has won this tournament, Tiger has won this tournament, Day and Rickie both have won this tournament, but Si Woo Kim winning definitely won’t make the list of notable winners. This year’s results were anticlimactic and disappointing, but hopefully next year will yield a stronger winner and better tournament.

Written by Paul Choma