TPC Sawgrass Greens To Be Resurfaced In '15, Could Other Significant Changes Be Coming Too?

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Long chatted about and apparently now the recent struggles at TPC Sawgrass have lined up a re-grassing of the greens after the 2015 Players, with other tweaks coming too. Unfortunately, no mention yet of some of the bigger changes desired by Pete Dye (mentioned in a Jeff Silverman Golf World profile out this week, not online).

More important to the future of the course is some sort of effort to recapture the fear factor and ruggedness of the original. More of the old Captain Jack Sparrow vibe instead of today's Captain-Sparrow-in-drag aesthetic.

Anyway, Rex Hoggard with the memo that went out to players detailing the planned work for the first time.

As a result, the Tour announced in Wednesday’s memo that a “significant” number of trees have been removed from around the most severely affected greens and that after the 2015 Players Championship the circuit will convert to a hardier variety of Bermuda grass and “will also make strategic design changes to expand certain green complexes to disperse wear and tear from foot traffic.”

“It isn’t one thing that caused this it was several things, shade, foot traffic, winter conditions and the application program, while accepted as the right thing to do it proved to be too aggressive,” said Ty Votaw, the Tour’s executive vice president of communication and international affairs.

Video: Zach Johnson, Others On Valero's Tepid Pace Of Play

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Just 71 players on Sunday at the Valero Open and it took them three hours to play the front nine, 5:32 for the last group, so naturally it's the old field size solution wheeled out by Zach Johnson in this Golf Central interview. He also makes some great points, but it was definitely a pot-kettle-black moment. Especially as he leaves out a mention of the players themselves, which is odd to say the least.

Johnson, says the issues are course setup, spacing of tee times, ripple effects, more daylight (!?) and the issue of putting the rules officials in a predicament in who to enforce the rules on and when. But the main solution he suggests entails reducing the size of fields. An oldie and not a very goodie, especially when Sunday proved that even a reduced field just can't get around a tough course quickly.

Great discussion between Ryan Burr, Steve Flesch and Tripp Isenhour follows the interview. Love the passion! Red phone will be ringing on Golf Channel Drive!