Golf New World Order has set up

Golf New World Order has set up

Any other time or place, and PGA Tour professionals would laugh, if not sneer, and attack the flag like the free buffet spread they receive in the lavish TPC Sawgrass clubhouse. It only measures a shade under 140 yards, little more than a wedge or chipped 9-iron, for the 156 players in the Players Championship field. Els And Former President Bush Inducted Into World Golf Hall Of Fame But a funny thing happens in the final round, when they all start gripping the wheel and steering like Sunday drivers. Synapses start firing. Capillaries constrict. The 17th green at Sawgrass looks tinier than whatever's left in Rory Sabbatini's wallet. "When you play on Tuesday and Wednesday, it's a pretty easy hole, a little flip 9-iron, no big deal," as former world No. 1 Tiger Woods once described it. "You get out there in the tournament, all of a sudden there's a pin location that's tucked in the corner or over Seve Ballesteros Was a Great Golf Player a slope and the green seems to shrink up a little bit." That's not all that puckers. Gas begins emanating from player orifices at a frequency so high, only dogs and rabbit-eared Colin Montgomerie can hear it. There are generally two trains of train-wreckin' thought about the fabled 17th: It's either the most famous water hole in professional golf, or the most infamous. Pretty much the same difference from a players' perspective, plus or minus a triple-bogey on the card.

This marks the beginning of the third decade that Sawgrass has hosted the flagship event of the PGA Tour, and while designer Pete Dye's landmark par-3 hole hasn't decided every single tournament, it's played a fateful and foreboding role plenty often enough. All this from a hole that finished 140th out of the 209 par-3s on the PGA Tour in 2010 with a ho-hum stroke average of 3.009 shots, or just a bogey or two above par for the week? Well, it's all a matter of when the bogeys happen, isn't it? On the 17th, timing is everything. In honor of the beered-up denizens who frequent the amphitheater surrounding the hole, here's this week's New World Order list, our bubbling six-pack of the most unforgettable moments over the first 29 years at the 17th, where hitting it in the drink as a player could drive you to drink in a hurry.