The Players Championship Weekend 2011

All the hard work has finally paid off... The tournament started on Thursday through to Sunday and it was a great success. The course was in spectacular condition and the players loved it. Maintenance kicked off in the mornings at 4:30am and we would have the course prepared and ready for play by 8am.

All fairways , greens , approaches , tee's , hole's were cut in the morning as well as all the bunkers hand raked. The greens were hand watered and the rest of the course was watered at night with over head irrigation.

Players could be seen on the range early in the morning getting ready for the days golf and again in the afternoon working on their game for the next day.

Play kicked off in the mornings at 7am and we had the course back in the afternoon to clean, cut and prepare for the next day of golf. Divot's needed to be filled as well as pitch marks needed to be repaired.

More then R1 million ($150 000) was spend on flowers and landscaping to make the course ever more special for The Players Tournament.

More than 2000 volunteers got to assist in marshaling the spectators on the golf course for the week as there were talks that over a 100,000 people will be attending on Saturday and Sunday.

The parking next to the stadium course could hold between 20-30 thousand cars. This area is for when they want to build a third golf course one day.

Saturday afternoon a big storm came through and the course was closed for 2 hours. A strong wind blew a few tree’s down and left the fairways , bunkers and tees full of pine needles from the trees lining the fairways and the course was unplayable. 75mm of rain fell but this was the least of our worries as when they did the R420 million ($60 million) revamp in 2006, they installed drainage and capped all the fairway and tees with sand as well as constructed the greens to USGA specifications with sub air systems that sucks all water out of the greens to firm them up. We had an hour to go out and clean the course and we just did it in time to everyone amazement that we got through before play. The time that was lost by the players had to be made up the following morning with an early tee off time and this put us under a lot of pressure to go out late Saturday evening in the dark and clean to get the course ready.

The morning after the storm came through the course was back to its pristine condition and the player head out early to finish the tournament.

Tim Clarks name is on the wall at the circle of champions and our flag was on the pole for a year because he won in 2010, let's hope it happens again soon.

Congratulations to K.J. Choi for winning The Players championship 2011 by beating David Toms on the first playoff hole no. 17.

Thanx to everyone at TPC Sawgrass - Tom , Clay , Andy , Jack , Jeff etc for having me there and thanx to DCC for giving me the opportunity to go and attend this prestige event.