The Players Championship 2018: Preview, predictions and picks

Here’s a few picks and predictions for the 2018 edition of THE PLAYERS Championship.

Due to head back to its old spot in March on the PGA Tour schedule next year, the 2018 edition of The Players Championship from the famed Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass is a May time event for the final time beginning Thursday morning.

With the biggest purse in tournament history at $11 million, a stacked field of 144 players, including every single player in the top 50 of the Official World Golf Ranking, will tee it up in search of one of the most coveted titles in the game.

As per usual, last year’s Players Championship was filled with plenty of drama. In just his second appearance at TPC Sawgrass, South Korea’s Si Woo Kim overcame a two-shot deficit on Sunday with a final-round 69 to become the youngest winner in tournament history at 21 years of age. It was also filled with heartbreak as 54-hole co-leader J.B. Holmes, who had posted rounds of 68-69-70 to put himself in a good position for the biggest win of his career, struggled to a 12-over 84 on the final day and finished tied for 41st.

But this is what’s so great about The Players Championship. This is one of the toughest golf tournaments to win, so hard that since its inception in 1974, nobody has ever won in consecutive years and only six players have won it more than once. While scores can go low on a good day, scores can get really high as well. Just ask Michael Campbell, who shot an opening-round 89 back in 2003. The funny part of that story (probably not to him) is that he made a birdie on the closing hole to avoid shooting 90. Things were so bad that he couldn’t keep track of everything, incorrectly signed his scores on the fifth and seventh holes and was disqualified. That’s a bad day. Yes, that’s the same Michael Campbell that won a U.S. Open. That’s what this place can do to people.

The Players Championship has long been called golf’s unofficial fifth major championship and always brings golf fans a great show. So what does the 2018 edition have in store for us? Well, every single player in the top 10 in the world rankings, a couple of whom already own victories at TPC Sawgrass, have a great shot at winning this tournament. So we’ll take a look at them and then go into a few more guys that have a chance.