Patrick Cantlay heeds Jack Nicklaus’ advice to win the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide

What started with a Joaquin Niemann victory in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, 11 months ago morphed into a 2019-20 PGA TOUR season unlike any other. Tiger Woods' record-tying 82nd career victory provided a jolt of electricity in late October, but when the pandemic struck in March it led to a shocking blackout. RELATED: FedExCup standings | The First Look For three months the PGA TOUR went to the sidelines along with every other professional sports league and it was anyone's guess how, when and whether the 2019-20 season would be completed. Yet here we are, two months into the TOUR's return, on the precipice of the 14th edition of the FedExCup Playoffs. We've completed 33 tournaments in the abbreviated regular season, and now 125 players have qualified for THE NORTHERN TRUST at TPC Boston, week one of a frenzied three-week run. When you consider the lineup of courses in this year's Playoffs - Olympia Fields, 35 miles south of Chicago, will host next week's BMW Championship, and East Lake GC in Atlanta will again be the stage for the TOUR Championship in two weeks - TPC Boston is a proverbial young 'un. Having opened in 2002, TPC Boston cannot match East Lake (est. 1904) or Olympia Fields (1915) for rich history. But it doesn't have to shy away, either, because TPC Boston has hosted 16 tournaments, 12 of them FEC playoffs, and the flavor runs deep. Here are nine things about THE NORTHERN TRUST and TPC Boston: 1. The defending champ is either Reed or DeChambeau: Patrick Reed shot 67-69 on the weekend to hold off Abraham Ancer (68-69) by one at THE NORTHERN TRUST last August. Ah, but hold on. That tournament was held at Liberty National in Jersey City, New Jersey. So does that make the defending champion Bryson DeChambeau, who won the last time a FedExCup Playoffs event was held at TPC Boston, back in 2018? Though he was lighter and not as long off the tee, DeChambeau was plenty explosive to capture the final Dell Technologies Championship. Seven back through two rounds, he made 13 birdies over the final 36 holes to finish 16 under and beat Justin Rose by two. It was DeChambeau's fourth career win, and his second straight Playoffs triumph because the week before he had captured - are you ready? - THE NORTHERN TRUST at Ridgewood C.C. in Paramus, New Jersey. (From 2007-2018 there were four playoff tournaments, but these days THE NORTHERN TRUST rotates between Boston and the New York area.) 2. They know how to put together a guest list: When the TOUR added TPC Boston to its schedule in 2003, the powers that be, including Jay Monahan (then the Championship Director, now PGA TOUR Commissioner) had a keen eye for talent. That first year they reached out to a couple of 23-year-olds - Adam Scott and Justin Rose. Scott had played in 33 PGA TOUR tournaments since turning 20 in 2000 but did not have his card here. Rose had played in just 15 PGA TOUR tournaments since 1999. After the first round (Rose shot 63, Scott 69) they hung around the TPC Boston short-game area for nearly two hours, just playing "chippy-putty." It was a wild and crazy Friday night. When Scott shot a second-round 62, then added 67-66, he earned his first TOUR win and a cool $900,000. Rose finished solo third and earned $340,000. It was the week they became PGA TOUR members. Two years later, sponsor invite Olin Browne, who at 46 was more than 25 years removed from days when he used to practice at The Country Club in Brookline and work at New Seabury CC on Cape Cod, came to TPC Boston as the world's 214th-ranked player. Then he stared down the likes of Tiger Woods, Vijay Singh and Fred Couples, closing with a 67 to capture the last of his three TOUR wins. These days the guest list at TPC Boston is merely 125 of the best players in the world. 3. The cream rises: While it's not a prerequisite to be rated in the upper echelon of the Official World Golf Ranking to get the biggest check here, it has been a common denominator with the 16 tournaments held at TPC Boston. The top-ranked player in the world has won here twice (Tiger Woods, 2006; Rory McIlroy, 2012), while on 11 occasions the winner was ranked inside the top 15. Only twice (No. 214 Olin Browne in 2005; No. 132 Charley Hoffman in 2010) has a winner at TPC Boston been ranked outside the top 100. 4. Hanse's team made it great: When John Mineck was putting together a project that would morph into one of the country's coolest golf courses, Boston Golf Club, he was asked who his designer going to be. "Gil Hanse," he said. "Haven't heard of him," a friend replied. Mineck nodded. "You will," he said. Boston Golf Club in Hingham, Massachusetts, was introduced in 2005 to critical acclaim and PGA TOUR officials took note. As Mineck had envisioned, offers came Hanse's way, among them the request to tweak and improve TPC Boston, which had opened in 2002. Hanse and Jim Wagner took on the assignment, got input from eight-time TOUR winner Brad Faxon, and when the FedExCup Playoffs were introduced in 2007, players were greeted by a more aesthetically pleasing TPC Boston. Hanse and Wagner worked wonders. They grew fescue, provided a rustic New England look to many of the holes, and added great flavor to the bunkers at the 7,261-yard, par 71. It was transformed into a picturesque course that required a stricter attention to course-management skills. The field average was slightly over par in the first four years of the tournament, but has been under par in each of the 12 years it has staged a FEC playoff since 2007. An advocate of layouts that provide players with different options but require them to think their way around, Hanse succeeded beautifully. 5. Spieth had a moment there: Jordan Spieth is going through a rough stretch under an intense microscope, so it's worth remembering the 9-under 62 he shot at TPC Boston on Sept. 2, 2013. His rookie season had already been quite special. Just five tournaments earlier, the 20-year-old Spieth had broken through for a victory at the John Deere Classic and earned his PGA TOUR card. Though he started the fourth round at TPC Boston in a tie for 29th, 11 strokes off the lead, Spieth loved the fact that he was paired with Phil Mickelson and that he was starting early, ahead of the thunderstorms. He played well, but a good day turned into an exceptional one when Spieth finished birdie, birdie, birdie, eagle for a 9-under 62. He was never going to win - he finished T-4, five behind the victor, Henrik Stenson - but now he had the attention of his distinguished peers. Mickelson, then 43 and only weeks removed from his stunning win at The Open Championship, signed his scorecard and promptly grabbed his phone to call U.S. Presidents Cup Captain Fred Couples. "Fred," said Mickelson, "pick the kid." Couples did. 6. Woods thrives: In his first five starts at TPC Boston (2003-2007), tournament host Woods had a victory, two ties for second, and a share of seventh. Though his foundation eventually shifted its affiliation to other tournaments, Woods has teed it up at TPC Boston 10 times with the sort of consistency that has defined his career. In 40 rounds, his scoring average is 68.30 and he's a whopping 108-under. 7. It produces great winners: The 16 tournaments at TPC Boston have produced 14 different winners (Vijay Singh and Rory McIlroy each won twice), nine of whom will be in attendance this week. Justin Thomas, who won here in 2017, is No. 1 in the FedExCup standings, Webb Simpson (2011) is third, Bryson DeChambeau (2018) is fourth, while McIlroy (2012, 2016) is eighth. The other past winners here who'll be in this week's field: No. 36 Adam Scott (2003), No. 49 Woods (2006), No. 67 Phil Mickelson (2007), No. 88 Rickie Fowler (2015), and No. 111 Charley Hoffman (2010). 8. You'd better go low: In 16 PGA TOUR tournaments at the par-71 TPC Boston, the average winning score has been 266.6 - or 17.4 under par. The low score is 262, by three different winners: Henrik Stenson in 2013, Charley Hoffman in 2010, and the second of Vijay Singh's wins in 2008. Only once has a winner failed to record at least one score of 65 or better - Rickie Fowler in 2015. (His 67-67-67-68 was stout, though.) Two winners, Scott and Hoffman, have recorded 62s, while on seven other occasions the winner has notched a 63. Winners have averaged 65.8 in the final round. 9. It's not technically Boston: For what it's worth, TPC Boston is closer to Providence, R.I. (20 miles south) than Boston (35 miles north). The course is tucked into the tiny town (pop.: 19,031) of Norton, right off the I-95 corridor. How small is Norton? Its first traffic light was installed in 1997. TPC Boston isn't the only landmark in Norton, however, because Wheaton College, a leading liberal arts establishment, is located here. Lesley Stahl of "60 Minutes" fame graduated from Wheaton, as did Chris Denorfia. A former major leaguer, Denorfia in 2015 made history - he became the first pinch-hitter to hit a home run in a 1-0 game while leading the Cubs to a win over the Royals. Match that, Lesley Stahl.

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PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – The bank was hesitant to approve the loan without plans, and the initial cost estimate from golf architect Pete Dye to create TPC Sawgrass did not include specifics on what the Stadium Course might actually look like.  But Dye – hired in the late 1970s by then-PGA TOUR Commissioner Deane Beman to build the TOUR’s signature course that would permanently host THE PLAYERS Championship – finally relented and drew up his vision on some nearby blueprints. “It was like pulling teeth, getting plans from Pete,â€� remembers his project manager, Vernon Kelly. With those plans in place and financing secured, Dye and his team went to work. As they prepared to walk the course that first day – the only real tangible evidence of the layout were the survey lines down the center of each hole – Kelly turned to Dye and said, “Wait a minute, I forgot something.â€� MORE ON DYE: Players praise Dye’s legacy | Dye passes away at age 94 He made a beeline back to the parked truck they had driven to the site. Inside were those plans that Dye had submitted to the bank. Kelly grabbed the documents, then ran back to his boss, who was eager to get moving. “What are those things?â€� Dye asked. “Oh, these are the plans,â€� Kelly replied. “We don’t need those,â€� Dye responded. “Put those back in the truck. I don’t want to see ‘em again.â€� It’s a funny story that Kelly tells some 40 years later, but it’s also reflective of the approach that Dye – the World Golf Hall of Famer who passed away in January at the age of 94 – used when designing courses. Sure, he could draw up a set of plans if necessary, but most of the time he operated best when he was tinkering and constantly evaluating, and re-evaluating his work. Plans were considered guidelines (or sometimes nuisances) rather than details to be strictly followed.   He needed room for creativity, to act upon his inspirations. He needed fluidity, able to improve something at any given moment, to act on his impulses. The last thing he wanted was to be caught in a corner, hands tied, unable to make something better. He was an artist, one who enjoyed the process perhaps more than the finished product. “Pete always said the saddest day for him was the day we had to grass a golf hole because he couldn’t tinker with it anymore,â€� said Bobby Weed, who apprenticed under Dye in the late ‘70s before striking out on his own. “He would tinker and he would rub on it right up until they were grassing. And I will say there’s been occasions when we’ve gone back and ripped out the grassing, ripped out the irrigation, and made a few more changes. Never say never on a completed golf course. “If Pete had a feeling there can be something that can be improved upon, nothing was going to stop him. He had an eye that no one else had. He saw things differently, and he saw things when no one else did.â€� That vision helps explains his ability as golf’s ultimate barnyard engineer, a term of endearment for people who are able to identify and solve problems simply by relying on the resources at hand. Or as industrial artist Sudhu Tewari defines it, “part science, part art and a whole lot of experimentation.â€�  A combination of common sense, creativity and ability to think on your feet – that seems apropos for Dye, the man with the Midwest roots who didn’t get locked in by plans and who found workarounds that become legendary solutions. Take, for example, the iconic 17th at TPC Sawgrass, the island-green hole for which Dye is most recognized. It wasn’t originally in Dye’s initial plans (not that he was looking at those anyway). The 17th was created as a solution to solve a problem. When Beman tasked Dye to build a “stadiumâ€� course that would allow fans to watch the action from different levels instead of standing behind each other with no gradient, the challenge was huge. After all, the swamp land that the PGA TOUR had purchased in North Florida – 417 acres for the sum of a single dollar, a bargain from most perspectives, although some, after looking at the actual land, suggested the TOUR had overpaid – was essentially flat. There were no natural mounds to work off, so Dye had to create them. In addition, Dye also had to cap the fairways and build the greens, adding the kind of undulation throughout those 417 acres that would test the world’s finest golfers. And he wanted to do this with his own signature design to allow any player in the field to win, as long as that player produced the best golf. That involved creating eye candy that might deceive some but certainly keep things honest on the scorecard. The bottom line is that he needed to move sand. Lots of it. And the best sand on the site just happened to surround the current location of the 17th green. The bulldozers had their starting point. “We kept trying to find sand to finish the course ‘cause we really didn’t have any money at that time to buy sand,â€� Kelly says. “So wherever we could find it, we basically used it.  “I remember very well, we got toward the end of the job and he told Alice [his wife], ‘You know, I don’t know what to do. I’ve got a 17-hole golf course here.’ And Alice said, ‘Well, you know, how about an island green?’â€� Adds Beman: “By the time we took all that dirt out of there and all that sand out of there, all we had was a huge lake. And then we had to figure out, OK, what kind of hole are we going to build? “It was originally designed not to be a complete island green, but a peninsula that had a small landing area to the left. And ultimately Pete and Alice decided that the most unique thing would be to have an island green.â€� It was a brilliant solution to a sticky problem, but in this instance, Dye did not get everything he wanted. He wanted the hole to be 165 yards long. Beman put his foot down. “We’re going to play this from about 130 yards, 135 yards, or we’re going to have a riot on our hands with our players,â€� Beman says. “So we came to an accommodation that has turned into being a pretty good mutual decision.â€� Moving sand was one thing. Figuring out the water issues became an equally Herculean challenge for Dye’s problem-solving skills. After all, the swamp not only was flat but also, of course, full of water. Natural drainage had been cut off when the A1A By-way was installed between the course and the nearby Atlantic Ocean. Dye had to figure out a new way to drain the area, but he simply couldn’t eliminate all the water. After all, part of the natural beauty of the location was the tree cover, and Dye did not want to lose that. He needed to find the proper balance. “If you appreciably change the water cover,â€� Kelly says, “you would’ve lost the trees.â€� His barnyard engineering skills again put to the test, Dye found the solution with multiple miles of corrugated drainage pipes. The trees were saved, the water had a place to flow to – and Dye turned a swampland into one of golf’s most celebrated courses. “Another one of those examples to me of just how good a designer Pete was,â€� Kelly says. “Drainage is one of the mechanical things that people don’t think about when they about a great golf course.â€� Mechanical is one thing. Creativity is another. Beman was asked if he ever tried to get inside Dye’s mind, to understand why he designed something a certain way, why a hole was shaped or a feature added that, on the surface, might not have appeared obvious. Beman replied that it would’ve been futile to figurer out Dye’s thought process. “I never tried to do that,â€� he says. “My impression of Pete was that he didn’t work off the plans very well, didn’t like to. “And actually, Pete Dye building a golf course is not cheap because he’s going to move dirt around until he finds what he likes to look at. And so, it’s not just of the plan and you put it here and here’s a green and here’s exactly what the elevation should be.  “He wasn’t satisfied until it fit his eye.â€� His eye often included elements that other designers had never considered – railroad ties being one of his signature ingredients, a way to create visual challenges while also adding to the look of a course. As Kelly jokes, “What I heard about when I first started with the TOUR was that Pete Dye designs are the only golf courses that could potentially burn down.â€� Dye’s barnyard engineering even extended to actual barnyard animals at TPC Sawgrass. Needing to rid the parcel of land of its thick underbrush and brambles and vines, as well as keep the grass trimmed in a budget-friendly manner, Dye brought in goats to handle the job.  “We would fence off a small area and put the goats in there and they would clear just about everything up to a 5-foot height that they could reach,â€� Kelly said. “And then we’d move ‘em to another area.â€� The goats were, according to Kelly, “very effective.â€�  This week during THE PLAYERS Championship, there will be tributes to the man who designed this legendary course, the man who ditched his own plans to carve out a masterpiece, this man considered a “master of maskingâ€� by Beman, because he can make “a course look more difficult than it actually is.â€� Dye is gone but his legacy will endure – each March when the TOUR holds its signature event, and the other 11 months when those of lesser handicaps make their pilgrimage to Ponte Vedra Beach in order to check the Stadium Course off their bucket lists. Each one will learn — as Bobby Weed did so many years ago while working with Dye on another of his famed courses, Harbour Town – that it’s not what you plan, it’s what you do. “He did his drawing with a tractor and a bulldozer, out in the field,â€� Weed says. “One of the things I really learned is don’t be afraid of changing, don’t be afraid of tearing it up and starting over. If it didn’t fit his eye, he was going to continue to shape and mold and rub on it until it felt good to him. … “Pete always said, ‘Show me a golf course built from a set of plans, I’ll show you a bad course.’â€� Forty years ago, Dye began construction on the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass. He sent the plans back to the truck — and then he built one of golf’s greatest courses. Remembering Dye at THE PLAYERS The late Pete Dye, designer of the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass, will be honored in a variety of ways at THE PLAYERS Championship this week. A permanent plaque will be unveiled on the first tee box that will include a quote from Dye: “It is a great bit of personal satisfaction to be asked by the TOUR members to build their golf course.â€� Three large panels on the side of the Fan Shop will include quotes about Dye from Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus, along with a tribute image of the 17th hole. Former PGA TOUR Commissioners Deane Beman and Tim Finchem, along with Bobby Weed, Jerry Pate and Vernon Kelly — all involved in different ways in the story of TPC Sawgrass – will be special guests to discuss Dye’s legacy. NBC, which is broadcasting THE PLAYERS, will show special vignettes to recognize Dye. Pete Dye courses on the PGA TOUR Thirteen different Pete Dye-designed courses have hosted PGA TOUR events: PGA West Stadium (California), American Express TPC River Highlands (Connecticut). Travelers Championship TPC Sawgrass Stadium Course (Florida), THE PLAYERS Championship Crooked Stick (Indiana), PGA Championship, BMW Championship TPC Louisiana (Louisiana), Zurich Classic of New Orleans) Oak Tree National (Oklahoma). 1988 PGA Championship Nemacolin Woodlands Mystic Rock (Pennsylvania), 84 LUMBER CLASSIC Harbour Town (South Carolina), RBC Heritage TPC San Antonio (Texas, AT&T, Canyons), Valero Texas Open Austin Country Club (Texas), World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play Kingsmill Resort (Virginia), Kingsmill Whistling Straits (Wisconsin), PGA Championship Kiawah Island Resort (South Carolina), 2012 PGA Championship Most wins on Pete Dye courses

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