The hole at TPC Sawgrass which has the ‘hardest tee shot’ on the PGA Tour by a mile and is much more difficult than the 17th

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The Players Championship remains one of the biggest events on the golfing calendar, with the tournament considered for some time to be the flagship week on the PGA Tour.

Most of the game’s biggest names are in Florida for the Players Championship. The season is starting to get into full swing, with the Arnold Palmer Invitational in the rearview mirror and the Masters emerging onto the horizon.

While there were a handful of surprise winners after the turn of the century, the event has tended to be won by some of the marquee names more recently. Scottie Scheffler made history in 2024 by becoming the first player to ever retain his title.

The world number one is also looking to join Jack Nicklaus as the only other three-time winner of the event this year. But there is definitely no let-up in Sawgrass.

Geoff Ogilvy names the hole at TPC Sawgrass which has the hardest tee shot on the PGA Tour

The course boasts arguably the most iconic hole on the PGA Tour – with the par three 17th making and breaking so many tournaments over the years. It has an ability to make the very best players on the planet look a little foolish for a moment.

But no player can relax after navigating the 17th. The 18th puts a player’s strategy under the microscope, with water all down the left, and little to be gained from bailing out on the right.

And speaking to Fried Egg Golf, Geoff Ogilvy – who never actually finished in the top 10 at the event – shared how the final hole is like nothing else on tour.

“It’s a really hard course. It’s my favourite TPC by a long way. It was the first one, it was Pete Dye, and you have to say now that I’ve got an architecture hat on a little bit more regularly, it’s useless piece of land. When it began, it was a swamp, dead flat and underwater, and they created an unbelievable landscape,” he said.

“If you go through, everybody knows the course, but when you play the course, it’s very obvious Pete wanted to find your weakness, he wanted to expose what you didn’t bring to the course that day. The first hole, you have to fade the tee shot, draw the second shot. The second hole, you have to draw the tee shot, fade the second shot. And that goes all around the course. You fade it off the fourth, you draw it into the green. Five, you fade the tee shot, you draw it into the green. It goes all the way around that if you don’t have both shots on a lot of these holes, you can’t play them well. That aspect, it asks you to hit some incredibly brave shots.

“17 is clearly a brave shot that you have no choice, you just have to hit it. 18 is the hardest tee shot on tour by a long stretch when you consider the punishment of missing. You’re either in the water or you’re going to make a bogey in the right rough, at least a bogey.”

How hard the 18th hole played at the 2024 Players Championship

It will probably not surprise Ogilvy to find out that the 18th hole was the second hardest on the course during the 2024 Players Championship. There were 92 bogeys and 24 double bogeys or worse at last year’s tournament.

But there were 11 holes last year which played over par across the week, with just three par fours playing under par along with the par fives.

It ensures that there is often a fantastic finish in store as the leaders tackle the final couple of holes. Four of the last five completed events have been won by just one shot – so fans have reason to be optimistic that this week’s tournament should come down to the wire.