How did the TPC Sawgrass come about?
How about the famous par-3 17th hole? Where did you get the idea for an island green? On the 17th we dug and we dug and started to shape a big deep lake. There was really no way we could put in dry land. My wife Alice said “why don’t we bulkhead the middle and build an island green?” I said “we’ll probably get killed, but let’s do it.” So we piled up some dirt, capped it with sand and bulkheaded it to keep it together and built a green on top. Did it bother you when the PGA Tour players initially bashed the course? J.C. Snead once said you “ruined a perfectly good swamp.” The first year of the Players there [1982], Jerry Pate won it and things were good. But then they started cutting the greens shorter and shorter. Those greens already had a lot of contours, and then they got really fast, which made them really difficult. The pros came close to killing me. But then I went in and rebuilt the greens and slowed them down. Three years ago I rebuilt them again. The contours are softer now.
