PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — You can never relax at TPC Sawgrass. The ultimate risk-reward course can give up low numbers, but if you let your guard down, it can bite you on the backside very quickly. Jason Day won THE PLAYERS Championship in 2016. He just won last week at the Wells Fargo Championship. But the Australian knows he cannot afford to rest on his laurels this week. He holds a piece of the course record with his opening round 9-under 63 from 2016. But he also has shot 80 and 81 on occasions during his seven starts at THE PLAYERS. “You can get on the wrong side of it easily and rack up a really big number,â€� Day said. “If you are playing well and driving it well you can give yourself a lot of opportunities but if you are not mentally sharp and spray it … the greens are so firm, there are a lot of shaved areas and the grain makes chipping very difficult, so it can certainly go south.â€� Like it did for Jon Rahm when he made his TPC Sawgrass debut last year. The Spanish star opened with a 68 and followed with a solid 72 to enter the weekend inside the top 10. Come Saturday, he shot 82 to miss the secondary cut. “It’s a test, and that’s something that I had to learn last year when on Saturday, I went a little more aggressive than maybe I should have and ended up making more bogeys than I really wanted to,â€� Rahm said. “(I learned) a lot of patience, stick to the strategy, and sometimes just to know that having a longer iron out of the fairway might be better than having a wedge out of the rough.â€� Patience does appear to be key. So much so that Jordan Spieth has finally convinced himself he needs more of it. He finished T4 in his PLAYERS debut in 2014, and was bogey-free for his first 58 holes that week, setting a standard in his mind he now sees as unreasonable with the benefit of hindsight … along with the fact that he’s missed the cut in his ensuing three starts. “This is not a place to go out and try and force birdies, and I think that’s kind of where I’ve gone the last few years that’s got me in trouble,â€� Spieth admitted. “The first year I played here, I almost won it, and so I just kind of assumed that it would come easy to me.â€� This year Spieth declared he will stick to a game plan just to get himself to the weekend and have a chance. Reigning FedExCup champion and current points leader Justin Thomas has shot 65 twice at TPC Sawgrass. He also has shot 75 twice and bombed out last year with a Saturday 79. Thomas says the beauty of the course and the tournament is that the best player of the week wins. You might think that is true every week – but often big-name guys can win without their best stuff. TPC Sawgrass, however, doesn’t allow this. The windows players must find with their shots are small. “It’s a shot-maker’s course,â€� Thomas said. “I think you look at the list of winners here, and it’s all over the place. You have some guys, some of the best players in the world, you have some guys that maybe haven’t had the same amount of success as the top players, but it truly is whoever is playing the best. “You have to be in total control of your ball. You have to be working it one way off the tee, working it another way into the green, have your distances down to where you’re putting from the right spots. You can’t short-side yourself. You have to be good around the greens and around the par-5s in two. It really is a total package golf course.â€� Someone is going to go low this week. Someone is going to do the opposite. Finding out who is the fun part.
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