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Golf Digest's Top 100 golf courses in America includes a Northeast Florida favorite
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- Golf Digest's Top 100 golf courses in America includes a Northeast Florida favorite
For more than 40 years, TPC Sawgrass has hosted The Players Championship on its Players Stadium Course, making it one of the most recognizable golf courses in the world.
Designed by architect Pete Dye and billed as his crowning achievement, the public course is home to the iconic – and infamous – Island Green at the par-3 17thhole.
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So it's easy to see why the course that has hosted golf's greatest like Jack Nicklaus, Fred Couples, Greg Norman, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson , Rory McIlroy and others, was recently named by Golf Digest to its 2023 list of America's 100 Greatest Golf Courses .
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Coming in at No. 41 – up from No. 52 a year ago – TPC Sawgrass is one of three Florida courses to make the annual list. Others in the state include Seminole Golf Club (No. 10) in Juno Beach and Calusa Pines Golf Club (No. 69) in Naples, both private clubs.
Earning top honors again on Golf Digest's list is Pine Valley Golf Club in Pine Valley, N.J. (The home of the Masters, Augusta National Golf Club , held steady at No. 2 on this year's list.)
TPC Sawgrass Stadium Course, Ponte Vedra Beach
Fans pack seating areas around No. 17, the famous Island Green, at the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass during the 2018 The Players Championship golf tournament.
Golf Digest Ranking:No. 41 (up from No. 52 in 2022)
Public or Private:Public
What Golf Digest said:"TPC's stadium concept was the idea of then-PGA Tour commissioner Deane Beman. The 1980 design was pure Pete Dye, who set out to test the world's best golfers by mixing demands of distance with target golf. Most greens are ringed by random lumps, bumps and hollows, what Dye calls his "grenade attack architecture." His ultimate target hole is the heart-pounding sink-or-swim island green 17th, which offers no bailout, perhaps unfairly in windy Atlantic coast conditions. The 17th has spawned over a hundred imitation island greens in the past 40 years. To make the layout even more exciting during tournament play, Steve Wenzloff of PGA Tour Design Services recently remodeled several holes, most significantly the 12th, which is now a drivable par 4."
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Did you know?Built on 417 acres of swampland purchased for $1, the course took just 11 months to complete, hosting its first players on Oct. 24, 1980. The course realized former PGA Tour commissioner Deane Beman's dream that golf fans should be able to watch the sport in the same manner as football and baseball fans, in a stadium, with unobstructed views of the competition.
Golf writer Garry Smits of the Times-Union contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Gold Digest Top 100 courses includes TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach
