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PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FL
To launch the 2008 holiday season, TPC Sawgrass invites Ponte Vedra locals and guests to the TPC Sawgrass Clubhouse’s TREE LIGHTING celebration on Friday, Nov. 28, from 5:30 to 8 p.m. with the tree lighting ceremony at 6:30 p.m. Ponte Vedra families and friends sipping complimentary hot cocoa and savoring old fashioned peppermint sticks enjoy staggering displays of 16 holiday trees in different styles. Outside, the 77,000 squarefoot Mediterranean Revival-style Clubhouse trimmed with garlands and roofline lighting irradiates the celebrated nights, welcoming guests throughout the holidays.
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PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FL
TPC Sawgrass Storyteller volunteers celebrate the holidays and give back to the community through an interactive event and festive tour of the Clubhouse, engaging children of the Tony Boselli Foundation after-school learning program, on Wednesday, Dec. 10, from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m.
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PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FL
The Stadium Course at the PGA TOUR’s flagship TPC Sawgrass, home to THE PLAYERS Championship, has been named one of only 24 public and resort golf courses in North America to receive a five-star rating in the 2008-09 edition of Golf Digest’s “Best Places to Play” guide. In the same edition, TPC Sawgrass’ Dye’s Valley Course received a four-star rating.
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PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FL
TPC Sawgrass and Sawgrass Marriott Resort & Spa announce the first ever TOUR PLAYER EXPERIENCE, allowing everyday golfers the chance to live like a PGA TOUR professional at one of the Travel + Leisure Golf “Top 10 Best Golf Resorts in the World.” “TOUR Player fans” become a part of the rich heritage of TPC Sawgrass and experience the magic of storytelling through activities and amenities that closely emulate a day in
the life of a PGA TOUR player.
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Sawgrass receives recognition
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FL
 The Tournament Players Club at Sawgrass has been ranked No. 29 in the U.S. and No. 50 in the world in Golf Magazine’s Top 100 Golf Courses listings (September 2005). Sawgrass was also named the No. 7 Best Golf Resort in the U.S. and the No. 1 Best Golf Resort in the state of Florida for 2005 by Travel and Leisure Magazine.
Designed by world-renowned golf course architect Pete Dye, the TPC at Sawgrass is the flagship facility to the PGA TOUR’s Tournament Players Club Network and serves as home to THE PLAYERS Championship. The club recently announced plans to initiate an expansive renovation program in 2006. Improvements will include significant infrastructural work to the famed Stadium Course and the construction of a new Mediterranean Revival-style clubhouse.
“We are extremely pleased that the TPC at Sawgrass has received this recognition, and are excited about further enhancing the quality of experience we will provide our TOUR members, resort guests and THE PLAYERS Championship patrons and sponsors through the renovation program,” said Vernon Kelly, president of PGA TOUR Golf Course Properties, who was project manager for the TPC at Sawgrass when it was under construction in the late 1970s. “We’re confident these enhancements will transform the TPC at Sawgrass into a unique five-star golf facility befitting the growing status of THE PLAYERS Championship and the resort.”
Work will begin upon the conclusion of THE PLAYERS Championship (March 20-26, 2006) and be completed in time for the 2007 tournament. While the Stadium Course is scheduled to reopen late in 2006, the Valley Course will remain open throughout construction, with golf shop operations working out of a temporary facility until the new clubhouse opens in 2007.
Actions speak louder than words at Sawgrass
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FL
 When Rob Strano began learning sign language, he was unsure what his application for the skill might be.
However, its purpose became clear when Strano realized there was a severe void in the community for golf programs targeted at deaf individuals.
"There was no one offering quality golf instruction to the deaf," he said. "I knew I had to change that."
In the spring of 2004, he did just that, launching the first golf camp for kids taught entirely in sign language. From May 24 to 26, the camp was brought to the Tournament Players Club at Sawgrass, where more than 50 six to 18 year-old students from the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind enjoyed three days of instruction. The camp was taught by Strano and fellow PGA professional Wally Armstrong, with the assistance of Stan Gustetic, Florida School for the Deaf and Blind's Administrator of Related Services.
Utilizing a variety of unique teaching methods and visual aids -- such as a figure to model the various movements of the golf swing, the students learned golf fundamentals, along with golf rules and etiquette.
"When a student is having difficulty with the golf swing, I will have them use the figurine to show me how the body should look at that point in the swing," Strano explained.
This innovative approach to golf instruction has proven to be very successful. However, learning to play golf is just one of the many benefits of Strano's camp.
"The tremendous amount of self-confidence, self-esteem, and sense of accomplishment achieved by these students is really remarkable," said Armstrong. "We had a little girl here yesterday, a really tiny one, and the first time she hit the ball, she smiled so big it stretched from ear to ear!
"That's what makes the camp so important for the kids and so rewarding for those of us on the teaching end. It was an extraordinary experience for all of us."
"I was extremely honored to be a part of the camp," said Shane Ponchot, TPC at Sawgrass Group Outings Coordinator. "It was very gratifying to see the smiles of the kids after each good shot and to see them grow not only as golfers, but also as confident young people, in just three short days.
"I feel fortunate to work for the TPC at Sawgrass where I have the opportunity to make such a significant impact on kids from the local community."
Strano was equally pleased with the reception the camp received from Sawgrass employees.
"The entire staff has been great. From the starter to the golf shop employees, to the waitresses, we couldn't have asked for better treatment.
"If we need balls, they're here. Ice, it's here. It is incredible how great everyone has been," he said. One aspect of the course proved to be most exciting for the students -- hole No. 17's spectacular island green.
"If we had had more balls, they would still be out there trying to hit the island green!" said Strano.
Both TPC staff and students are looking forward to their return next year.
Sawgrass' 17th: How a legend was built
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FL
 If necessity is the mother of invention, the 17th hole of the Stadium Course at the Tournament Players Club at Sawgrass is a gifted child.
Originally intended to be bordered by water on the right side only, the hole evolved into the famous island green due to needs elsewhere on the course. As architect Pete Dye was building the course on swampland, a good pocket of sand -- a rare commodity -- was discovered in the area around 17.
"We needed good, quality sand for developing the fairways," recalled then-PGA TOUR Commissioner Deane Beman, who was the mastermind of the TPC network. "As the holes started developing we needed more and more sand, and that's where the good sand was so that's where the lake is."
After the sand was harvested and much of it used to create Nos. 15 and 16, Dye was left with a gaping hole in the ground and an even larger dilemma.
"We had this big hole in the ground without any green," Dye said years later. "Alice [his wife] said, 'Why not just make an island green?' I said, 'I dunno.'
"It always was supposed to have been a par 3. It was to have a lagoon of some variety, but I really didn't have any concrete prepared plan."
The makeshift plan to incorporate the man-made crater into the design of the course was implemented, and perhaps the most treacherous and terrifying 132 yards in golf was born.
"Everybody wanted to see this course that the players feared," said Pete Davison, the PGA TOUR's vice president of golf course properties and director of operations. "They also wanted to play it. It no question has elevated (THE PLAYERS Championship)."
The 17th green measures 90 feet deep, 87 feet wide across the back and 50 feet wide across the front. A ridge dissects the middle of the green with a 2-foot drop from the upper rear to the lower front. There is also a lower tier on the back right -- a foot lower than the upper level -- which is exactly where you can expect to find the Sunday pin placement.
"I don't think anyone thought that hole would become what it is," said Beman. "It's only 130 yards maximum until you are playing for something important."
Like the $6-million mother of all purses at THE PLAYERS Championship.
Golf ball diver discovers hidden treasures
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FL
 Spahn has a different outlook than most who come to the Tournament Players Club at Sawgrass.
"The best hole out there is No. 17," he said sadistically. "The more water the better."
No one knows more about golf course hazards than Spahn. During the last 11 years he's survived an alligator attack and three water moccasin bites. He's also been pinched countless times by crabs, and he has been on the wrong end of catfish barbs more often than he cares to remember.
"I've been bitten by about everything you can find in these waters here," said Spahn, who also lost a chunk of his hand to a snapping turtle. "It's an occupational hazard."
No, he's not the world's unluckiest golfer. He just makes his living off the misfortunes of others. As a golf ball diver Spahn has spent more than a decade traveling the Southeast gathering unanswered prayers and overblown egos from the bottom of lakes and ponds.
"The best day I ever had was 15,000 golf balls," Spahn said. "I probably could have gotten a lot more but I wasn't prepared for that many."
On average Spahn is in the water four hours a day and harvests 5,000 balls. While he says he has seen too many courses to name the one that yields the most, he certainly knows where to search at the Stadium Course, host to THE PLAYERS Championship this week.
"I do see a lot of balls go in the water at Sawgrass because it's a difficult layout," Spahn said. "[No.] 17 is the best."
Spahn's worst experience came at nearby Sawgrass Country Club. While feeling along the bottom of a lake for golf balls -- visibility is almost nonexistent because of the silt that gets stirred up -- he encroached on an alligator.
The 7-foot reptile responded by taking a bite out of his arm.
"He just grabbed me and let me go," said Spahn, a Northern Shaolin Kung Fu instructor who has been practicing the art for 35 years. "Normally they grab and start spinning and try to drown you or twist your arm off. I have a few scars on my arm, but that's about it.
"I was lucky he was small."
Small, though, is a relative term for Spahn, who said he missed by inches being snapped up by a 13-footer in South Carolina.
"I was real lucky then," he said.
He's been nearly as fortunate in his underwater treasure hunt. Aside from the fact he said a good golf ball diver can make "a lot of money," Spahn has stumbled upon some rather unique finds.
For starters he's got a collection of about 500 golf clubs he's pulled from watery graves, presumably tossed by their frustrated owners.
"About a year ago I found a whole set of graphite-shafted Pings complete with two wedges, a putter and two metalwoods, all in one spot," Spahn said. "Apparently the guy liked the bag, though, because I didn't find that."
Eight years ago Spahn discovered what he believes to be one of former President George Bush's golf balls. Spahn said Bush played a round at Marsh Landing in Ponte Vedra Beach a short time after losing the election to Bill Clinton.
"It's a Titleist and it has the presidential logo on it and his [George Bush] signature imprinted on the ball," he said.
One of Spahn's more outlandish recoveries include an aerial bomb, which he came across while diving at a course that was built near an old bombing range. He's also found an entire telephone booth, a bowling ball and a discus.
He also seems to latch onto every fishing lure lost by thrill-seeking golfers who presumably have found birdies scarce.
"I usually find those the hard way," Spahn said.
Spahn might get hooked on the job quite often, but he's equally hooked to his job.
"I like my office," Spahn said. "There are a lot worse places to spend your days than on a golf course -- even if you are working."
On Course: Dye-namic design
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FL
 There is more than just the famed island green. There is an evergreen ideal. There is an enduring aura to a golfing landmark, born not only of the challenge that it represents, but also of the caliber of players who have excelled on its tempestuous topographical features.
There is a legend behind the landmark, too, an iconoclast who took an idea for a golf showplace from another visionary and, literally, ran it into the ground.
The Stadium Course at the Tournament Players Club at Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., is the home course for the PGA TOUR's member players and site of THE PLAYERS Championship-the crown jewel of the TOUR schedule, offering the richest purse and attracting the best field in professional golf.
But that is just the functional description of the Stadium Course, conceived by former PGA TOUR commissioner Deane Beman and brought to fiery life by Pete Dye, one of the most influential architects of the last 50 years. Such a description omits the enchantment it evokes and the unmitigated exhilaration and infuriation it provokes.
Dye envisioned designing a place that was combination club and resort. With the help of his wife, Alice, he ended up creating a mystical playground that hosts more than 40,000 rounds per year.
"I can't explain it, but that place just has a feel about it and a lot of people pick up on that feel," Dye said recently. "They just want to go play that thing, even if they know they're going to get their brains beat in by it."
Much of the mysticism of the TPC at Sawgrass emanates from its regal stature. Before the Stadium Course came along in 1980, few golf courses that hosted championships were accessible to the general public. Most major championships took place on private layouts. The TPC at Sawgrass, one of 21 in the Tournament Players Club network, changed the dynamics of golf participation in the U.S. Now, the average player could test his abilities on the same 7,093-yard crucible where the world's finest players displaced divots.
No matter that the test was so arduous that not even the touring professionals enjoyed the Stadium Course at first. The layout has since been softened, made "more fair," but its firm, small, undulating greens and angular fairways require exacting shotmaking. Of course, the amphitheater mounding alongside the holes engenders a feeling of intimacy while at the same time making players feel like they are performers on a grand stage.
Negotiating the layout induces an anxiety that drove the first winner of THE PLAYERS Championship, Jerry Pate, to hurl himself into the pond beside the 18th green. Pate pitched Beman and Dye into that same pond for good measure.
The measure of a fine course can be taken by studying the caliber of players who have conquered it. Little wonder that the list of winners of THE PLAYERS Championship includes the game's biggest names, including 2001 champion Tiger Woods. Among the others: Hal Sutton, Fred Couples, Tom Kite, Steve Elkington, Davis Love III, Lee Janzen, Nick Price, Justin Leonard and David Duval.
Of course, no player shined more than Greg Norman did in 1994, when he tied Couples' course record of 63 on the way to a staggering 24-under-par total of 264 that remains the record for 72 holes.
And no hole is more memorable, more photographed, more famous than the par-3 17th at the Stadium Course. The 17th hole, only 137 yards, was an accident -- a rich irony considering that much of the TPC at Sawgrass and the network of TPC courses came to fruition through careful planning and bold foresight.
Dye originally intended there to be a small lake adjacent to the green. But the soil around the green site contained the best sand for filling in fairways on other parts of the marshy property. Before anyone noticed, three-fourths of the area around the green had been removed. Pete and Alice immediately remembered a watery hole at the nearby Ponte Vedra Club, designed by Herb Strong, and the island 17th was born.
The touring professionals dread the hole, since no lead is safe until it is navigated. Fans who attend the tournament love the hole for its unpredictability, savoring the good shots as well as the doomed.
And the many visitors who play the course - via as guests of the posh Sawgrass Marriott - dream of staring down the diabolical little hole. They seek to prove their mettle as shotmakers-no matter that their success rate is stunningly low. Course staff estimates that 120,000 to 150,000 balls are recovered from the watery depths each year.
But they usually meet triumph and disaster just the same. With a smile.
So it is with the enduring allure of the TPC at Sawgrass, which is more than a stomping grounds for the golf's elite or a resort for die-hard enthusiasts. It is the first of its kind.
It is a home for all players.
Architect Bio: Pete Dye
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FL
 Pete Dye has never had any qualms about taking risks, infusing new ideas into classical design concepts, or building some of the most startling, intriguing and difficult golf courses in modern design. Because of this adventurous spirit, Dye is considered in many circles to be the most influential course architect in the last 50 years.
Dye, whose ideas have been tempered by sound strategic guidance from his wife, Alice, an accomplished amateur player, enjoyed a successful insurance practice in central Indiana before finding his true calling as a course designer.
Seldom working from set plans or elaborate blueprints, Dye sculpted his visions with a hands-on approach that has increasingly come into vogue in recent years. Especially in the early design days, Dye was not averse to hopping on a bulldozer to attain the kinds of features he sought for his courses.
Though viewed as a maverick with a penchant for stirring controversy - the byword for his work is "Dye-abolical" - Dye's philosophies are grounded in the old-style concepts. A month-long trip to Scotland, golf's home country, in 1963 influenced his work significantly. There Pete and Alice discovered railroad ties shoring up bunkers, smallish greens with bold movement, tiny pot bunkers, sandy waste areas, and angular, rolling fairways guarded by strategically placed hazards.
Of course, practically all these features can be found on many of his courses, including his most famous design, the Stadium Course at the Tournament Players Club at Sawgrass. Even the stadium golf aspect he incorporated at the behest of former PGA TOUR commissioner Deane Beman is reminiscent of links holes routed through natural mounds and dunes.
In addition to Sawgrass, Dye has created some of the most difficult layouts in modern history, including PGA West, the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island, and Whistling Straits. This tends to overshadow some of his most subtle and brilliant work, most notably Harbour Town Golf Links in Hilton Head, SC, a relatively short but strategically enthralling course he built in collaboration with Jack Nicklaus.
Sawgrass has undergone various changes since it opened in 1982, but it still stands as one of the finest representations of his ability to meld modern and classical concepts to create holes that are strategically exacting and visually striking.
Josh Watkins
Josh Watkins, her only child, was killed in Fallujah, Iraq on Oct. 21, 2006. Watkins, a 25-year-old corporal, was on routine patrol when a sniper shot him.
Watkins' body arrived at Dover Air Force Base a few days later. He was originally scheduled to come home on leave at the time of his death, but his mother says that her son volunteered to help restore order to the violent Iraqi province of Al Anbar.
To honor her son, Watkins Vazquez decided to try to establish a scholarship in his name at the University of North Florida, where her son attended for three years before joining the Marines. His mother made him promise to return to school, and Watkins had been salting away tuition money to keep his word.
Watkins Vazquez was telling her story to the Mortgage Bankers Association when she met the David Pillsbury, the President of PGA TOUR Golf Course Properties.
Pillsbury immediately pledged $10,000 of the PGA TOUR's money to help start the Marine Corporal Joshua Watkins Memorial Scholarship, and Watkins Vazquez has remained close to the TOUR ever since.
Watkins Vazquez spoke on Monday during an "America Supports You" event at TPC Sawgrass, which was aimed to raise money for the Wounded Warrior Project. During her speech, Watkins Vazquez shared a poem she had written to her son during his deployment.
"Honor our military, thank them, and shake their hand. They are all our heroes," Watkins Vazquez told the attendees, who were on hand to play in the "America Supports You" Charity Golf Tournament.
The golf was forgettable -- heavy rains washed away the round after a mere two holes -- but a live and silent auction raised tens of thousands for various charities that benefit six ASY military homefront groups that directly support U.S. troops and their families.
PGA TOUR player Frank Lickliter hosted the event, which has become a staple of Lickliter's ongoing work with the Wounded Warrior Project. Lickliter was continuously called upon to augment the auctions with promises of individual instruction, which he handled with his trademarked quiet humor.
The highlight of the event was the brief pre-auction speech given by Watkins Vazquez, who has worked with the PGA TOUR in recent months to raise money for various military causes.
Watkins Vazquez was introduced to the event's attendees by Pillsbury, who called Watkins Vazquez "wonderful example of a true patriot."
Watkins Vazquez told the story of her son to the dozens of attendees at the "America Supports You" Charity Golf Tournament, and by the time she finished, many people were openly crying.
It is something Watkins Vazquez is used to. She tells her story often, and is prepared to do so as many times as required to raise money.
Her son's image is seen every day by thousands of Jacksonville commuters on the I-295 interchange. A large billboard -- anonymously donated -- shows Corporal Watkins' solemn image, with the words "Home of the Brave" above his image and lifeline.
"[Josh] was a toe gunner attached to the 2nd Tank Battalion. For most of the time he was on a gun turret," Watkins Vazquez said. "Towards the end, he had just gotten promoted and was made a vehicle commander.
"He volunteered for his last mission. He was supposed to come home Oct. 30, and I couldn't understand why he was out on a mission. He volunteered to be one of five guys [that] would patrol the main highway in and out of Fallujah."
She vividly recalls one of their final conversations.
"Mom, I don't know what you see on TV over there, but we Marines know we have a job to do," Watkins told his mother. "We'd rather do it here than have anything ever touch American soil again."
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