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.