"The Gates of Hell Have Opened"... 'Sograss TPC Hole 17'

The Players Championship Battleground 'Akmong-ui Hall'

It is a place of nightmares.

This refers to the 17th hole (par 3) at the Sawgrass TPC (par 72, 7,256 yards), the battleground for the PGA Tour’s “fifth major,” The Players Championship (total prize money $25 million), which opens on the night of the 9th (Korean time). The hole is a par 3 with a length of only 137 yards. Players can easily reach the green with a pitching wedge. However, due to the island green and the constantly changing direction and strength of the wind, attacking the hole is difficult. It is notorious as the “death hole” where PGA Tour players lose more than 50 balls every year.

This is a view of the 17th hole at SoGraz TPC, the battleground of The Players Championship, known as the "Fifth Major."

The “former golf emperor” Jack Nicklaus (USA) even said, “Many players would want to plant bombs underneath it.” The number of golf balls lost in this hole has reached 868. In 2007, a staggering 93 golf balls fell into the water, with 50 disappearing into the water in just the first round.

Bob Tway (USA) is the protagonist of the “historic disaster.” In the third round of 2005, his ball fell into the water four times, resulting in a shocking 9-over-par 12 strokes on the par 3 hole. Sean O’Hair led by one stroke in the fourth round of 2007 but faltered with a quadruple bogey, handing the winner’s cup to Phil Mickelson. Paul Goydos (USA) lost bitterly in a playoff against Sergio Garcia (Spain) in 2008 due to a tee shot mistake. Garcia also collapsed with a quadruple bogey in the fourth round of 2013, losing to the “golf emperor” Tiger Woods (USA).

Woods, who won twice in 2001 and 2013, made a double bogey in the second round of 2019. An Byeong-hun lost four balls and scored 11 strokes in the first round of 2021, an octuple bogey. He suffered the second-highest number of strokes nightmare after Tway. An confessed, “It was really terrible.” Last year, Jeff Straka (Austria) made a quadruple bogey, and Brooks Koepka (USA) was caught by a triple bogey.

Of course, it is not all misfortune. Shane Lowry (Ireland) made a thrilling hole-in-one in the third round last year. He took a pitching wedge from 123 yards, and the ball flew straight, reached the right side of the hole, and then spun into the hole with side spin. It was the 10th hole-in-one overall and the first in three years since Ryan Moore’s in the first round of 2019.