PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – While the world’s best golfers finish their opening round at The Players Championship, another team has been preparing for this moment all year long. At the TPC Sawgrass Stadium Course, the grounds crew works behind the scenes to make sure the course is ready for one of golf’s biggest stages.
The fairways may look perfect this week, but the work started long before tournament week.
“We work every other week of the year to get ready for this week,” TPC Sawgrass director of golf course maintenance operations Lucas Andrews said.
Andrews said preparing the Stadium Course for The Players Championship is a year-round effort.
“It’s all the prep that goes into getting to this week,” Andrews said. ”I’m not going to say the pressure comes off, but if we’ve done our work prior to this, then this week is just about executing.”
More than 100 staff members maintain the property year-round. During tournament week, they’re joined by about 90 volunteers from 25 states and 14 countries. Some of them are college students studying turfgrass management or horticulture. Many return every year.
“We’ve been doing that program for several years now, and we’re really lucky that we get a lot of people return,” Andrews said. ”We’ve got people that know their way around the golf course. They know what our expectations are, and we can really hit the ground running.”
The days are long. Crews start around 4 a.m. and often work until 10 p.m.
“We’ll set the golf course up in the morning,” Andrews said. ”Then we’ll be on call through the day. When we come back out after play, reset the golf course, ready for the next day.”
Even after the tournament ends, the work continues. Andrews said the team meets with rules officials and agronomy staff to review what worked and what can be better next year.
“Our main focus will be what can we do better for next year,” Andrews said.
The course itself is always evolving - from the technology used to maintain it, to the grass varieties grown here. A major change came when The Players moved from May back to March.
“Our precision is through the roof compared to what it was years ago,” Andrews said. “The biggest change we experienced was going from May back to March when we went from a Bermuda grass golf course to a seeded golf course for the championship.”
For Andrews, it’s a journey that started with an internship in 2009. Seventeen years later, he now leads the team preparing one of golf’s most famous courses. And he said being part of the championship never gets old.
“It’s a tremendous amount of pride,” Andrews said. ”To be able to represent the PGA Tour, TPC Sawgrass, and the local community - to have any part to play in this championship is amazing.”
Once the final putt drops Sunday and a new golfer is crowned the winner, the process of preparing the Stadium Course for next year’s Players Championship begins all over again.