In 1981, PGA Tour players at The Players Championship were hitting wound golf balls with persimmon drivers, walking on metal spikes, and would have scoffed at the notion of a long putter or a 7-wood.
Few had agents, fewer had on-site swing coaches and none had nutritionists, personal trainers, or their own public relations flacks.
The media covering the 1981 Players was housed in the cart barn, shared a bank of phones, dictated our stories to editors and only guessed at the distances of putts and approach shots.
Now we have transcripts of interviews, ShotLink that tells us to the inch how long a putt was, a players’ percentage of greens in regulation from the left or right rough … information we input into our laptops, then use web content programs that can post those stories in seconds.
This is surely aging myself but that’s my career span covering The Players Championship, for three newspapers, the Clay Today, the St. Augustine Record and the Florida Times-Union.
My first Players was in 1981, the last played at the Sawgrass Country Club. It was won by Raymond Floyd, one of 19 players in the field that year who are now in the World Golf Hall of Fame. He beat another Hall of Famer, Curtis Strange, in a playoff.
My next Players, March 13-16, will be my 40th overall and 30th as the Times-Union’s golf writer.
Most of those were when I was the sports editor at the Clay Today and St. Augustine record, and as the Times-Union’s golf writer — which meant long days during a long week, after two months of working on preview stories. Others were when I was part of the Times-Union team under former golf writer Chris Smith, chasing down a lot of stories on guys who finished fourth or on green speeds.
Regardless, every minute of every year has been a blast.
Working with a superb Times-Union team
Like anything over that long a time, the process is vastly different.
When I started covering The Players Jacksonville had two daily newspapers and three local TV stations in Jacksonville. Jay Solomon was the only local radio reporter providing regular coverage.
We had national media whose numbers grew over the years but legends such as Dan Jenkins, George Sweda, Marino Parascenzo, Ron Green Sr., Furman Bisher, Tom Boswell, Art Spander and Kaye Kessler recognized what PGA Tour Commissioner Deane Beman was trying to do with the tournament and the course and knew it was big enough to merit their presence and prose.
But the Times-Union had a long history of making The Players Championship coverage a highlight of the sports year before I ever picked up a credential and I’ve had the privilege of working with talented colleagues.
I learned the ropes of covering the PGA Tour from David Lamm, Fred Seely, Greg Larson and Smith. I worked with great Times-Union columnists such as Mike Bianchi, Mark Woods, Gene Frenette, Sam Borden and Mike Freeman. Editors such as Jim Nasella, Chet Fussman and Tim Walters had original ideas, executed them and made us all better.
Relationships with Tour pros has changed
The main difference in covering The Players in 1981 and The Players in 2025 is the personal relationships with the stars. While access to PGA Tour players has always been easier than major pro team sports, it’s still different from 40 years ago.
We didn’t have to wait for players to come into the media center. We talked to them on the range, in the locker room, in parking lots and during the days before they all started working out, in the clubhouse bar. There was no entourage keeping reporters at arm’s length.
The stars of those early Players days, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Tom Watson and Lee Trevino; and later Davis Love III, Fred Couples, Greg Norman, Nick Price and Phil Mickelson didn’t hold interviews as much as have conversations with you.
We got to know them and their families, and they trusted us with off-the-record or background insights, knowing there wasn’t a thing called social media that would have an off-hand remark go viral within minutes.
Yet, much is the same: The buzz around the Island Green at No. 17, the sense of pending drama when the last group tees off at No. 1 on Sunday and the look of joy and relief (and often both) on a players’ face when he drops the last putt and realizes he’s conquered the deepest field in golf, on one of the most difficult course, and for the most money.
I don’t know how many more Players I have in front of me — maybe a handful. But it’s been the pleasure of a lifetime watching the greatest golfers in the world tackle one of the world’s iconic courses and trying to do justice to our readers by writing about the magic they worked.
No matter what we had as the tools of our job, it boiled down to observing, and then telling a story. And the stories have been epic for four decades.
Garry Smits Top Five Players Championships
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Jerry Pate’s 5-iron into No. 18 for a 2-foot putt to win the first Players at the Stadium Course.
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Mark McCumber playing 32 holes in one day in 1988 to become the first Jacksonville native to win The Players.
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David Duval landing a wedge shot on a green as hard as a tile floor at No. 17 to set up a birdie putt that clinched the 1999 Players.
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Tiger Woods’ “Better Than Most” putt at No. 17 in the 2001 Players.
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Rickie Fowler making birdie at No. 17 three times in one day (regulation and two playoff holes) to win the 2015 Players.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Covering The Players Championship: How golf and the pros have changed
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