I wanted to expand on a post from last year’s PGA Championship live blog by adding The Players to our plot of double bogey rates. Each point represents the double bogey (or worse) rate for a single hole during a single round, and the larger dots are averaged across each tournament.

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Even though overall scoring average at the Players (+0.14) is much closer to tour average (-0.29) than it is to the majors (+1.86), the double rate at Sawgrass is more in line with the majors than tour average (black dotted line). This doesn’t surprise me: while Sawgrass is often scorable, misses are punished harshly. With all the water, there are plenty of penalty strokes leading to plenty of doubles.

18 popping up on here so often is a good reminder of how brutal a finishing hole it is, particularly off the tee. You can either take on the water and risk hitting three off the tee, or bail right where you will probably be punching out.

A couple of fun Players memories on here: Round 3 in 2016, AKA the Ken Duke round, when the greens were double cut and rolled on a dry, windy day, leading to brutally firm and fast greens that drew comparisons to Shinnecock. Russell Knox said of then-world 495 Ken Duke’s 65: “That has to be the best round — and I mean, ever”. He wasn’t far off: we have it as the 12th-best adjusted SG round on record. And then round 2 in 2022, which doesn’t even fully capture that Saturday, which included the completion of round 1 and the start of round 2 in winds gusting up to 40 mph. Ten of the 21 players who played 17 (the island green) as part of their first round that day found the water.

Seeing 17 on here got me thinking about how unique a hole it is: you either hit the green and have an excellent look at par or birdie, or find the water and are staring at double unless you can get up and down from the drop zone. In fact, since 2010, doubles (or worse) make up 42% of above-par scores on 17 at Sawgrass, easily the highest percentage for any hole during that time period. 15 at PGA National comes next at 28%, and the tour average is just 12%. I have to think that type of fine line (present frequently at Sawgrass), where a single foot can represent a nearly two-stroke swing, has to be at least partially responsible for the “randomness” in results we see each year.

I want to note that our live model isn’t accounting for this excess of doubles on 17 (it only knows the overall scoring average of each hole and its par). So, if someone has a medium lead (say, 2-4 strokes) coming into 17 Sunday, our model is going to be slightly overconfident in them holding onto it.