Want To Kill The Game? The PGA Tour Showed Us How At Sawgrass

IF ANYBODY ever needed evidence of why the Players Championship can never be regarded as a fifth major, they got it during the third round at TPC Sawgrass.

The PGA Tour, clearly miffed by the fact that Jason Day had the temerity to play 36 holes on their Pete Dye-designed stadium course in 129 blows, decided to get their own back. And how! They chose not to water the greens after the second round was completed and, to compound the felony, they elected to put the flags in positions that, quite frankly, were more suited to crazy golf. Only the windmills and tunnels were missing.

Sergio Garcia five-putted, Day four-putted, Rory McIlroy missed from eight inches and scores soared skywards. A course that had yielded hundreds of birdies and plenty of eagles on days one and two suddenly became almost unplayable. Let's be clear - it became unplayable not because of 30mph winds or driving rain, and not because it is some masterpiece of golf course architecture. It became unplayable because somebody's feelings were hurt.

On what was effectively an ideal day for low scoring, anybody who walked off the 18th green having scored 76 or better left the place feeling that they had got off lightly, just 24 hours after scores in the mid-60s were being posted for fun. Remember - sport is meant to be fun.

Martin Kaymer and Russell Knox both faced the ignominy of putting NINE on their cards. Knox put three balls in the water at the par-three 17th not because the hole is difficult but because the 16 holes up to that point had taken so much out of him.

And here's the thing we should all be most furious about - the average playing time for 18 holes at Sawgrass was, wait for it, five hours and 40 minutes. That is 340 minutes, or almost 20 minutes per hole. It is like watching paint dry. In fact, cancel that - paint dries faster than that.

If the PGA Tour thinks that this is what we regard as entertainment then they couldn't be more mistaken. If they honestly believe that rounds of golf that take 340 minutes to play will bring people flocking back to the game and attract youngsters to the sport then we should start to seriously fear for the future of tournament golf and the sanity of those who run it.

In Europe, Keith Pelley, the chief executive of the European Tour, is doing everything he can to encourage players to take less time over shots. But even he is finding that it is easier said than done - during the Mauritius Open at the weekend, Siddikur Rahman, of Bangladesh, walked from his ball to the green, more than 100 yards away, and back even though he knew where the flag was and knew exactly how far he had to hit the ball. In the end, he struck the ball 45 feet from the pin. Most weekend golfers could do that while blindfolded.

Here's the thing that the PGA Tour needs to understand - most of us want to see tournament professionals smashing the ball 300-plus yards, sticking an approach to 10 feet and knocking the putt in. We don't want to see brilliant golf shots running off the green because somebody has decided it is a good idea to put the flag on a downslope or on a spot that could only be reached by a guided missile. And we definitely do not want to watch rounds of golf that take the best players on the planet more than five-and-a-half hours to complete.

What do you think of the course setup at TPC Sawgrass? Let us know on social media or the comments section below.