The Players Championship 2019 preview: Predictions, picks and upsets

Here’s a few picks, predictions and upsets for the 2019 edition of The Players Championship from TPC Sawgrass.

After a dozen years in May, The Players Championship heads back to its March spot on the PGA Tour schedule as the golf world prepares to be bombarded with huge tournaments over the next few months. Under the new format, we’ve got The Masters next month, the PGA Championship in its new May slot, the U.S. Open in June, The Open Championship in July and then the FedEx Cup Playoffs in August. That’s a lot of great golf headed our way.

However, before we get to the first major championship at Augusta in about a month, we’ve got golf’s unofficial fifth major to discuss. For quite a while now, The Players Championship has been the flagship event of the PGA Tour, annually bringing one of golf’s strongest fields to the famed Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass. Armed with a new trophy, the first of its kind in sports and the fourth different prize to be handed out at this tournament, The Players will also boast the largest purse in the game’s history. $12.5 million will be on the line this week with a cool $2.25 million check going to the winner.

144 of the top players in the world, including every single player in the top 50 of the Official World Golf Ranking, are in Ponte Vedra Beach this week to take their shot at glory. The past winners of this event, which was introduced and called the Tournament Players Championship until 1988, is a who’s who of the game’s greats. Jack Nicklaus won three of the first five titles at this event and remains the only three-time winner.

There have been five men to win this championship twice, all of whom are major champions. Fred Couples, Hal Sutton, Steve Elkington and Davis Love III obviously aren’t here this week but there is one competitor in the field this week with a chance to join The Golden Bear and I bet you know who it is. But we’ll get to that in a bit.

First, let’s take a quick look at the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass and then we’ll get into how the top players in the world could fare this week, a few more stories that could be entertaining and then I’ll give you my official pick for the 2019 edition of The Players Championship.