Making up for last year at the 2021 Players Championship

TPC Sawgrass (Photo: Golfdom Staff)

When the 2020 Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., got canceled midtournament last year due to the coronavirus pandemic, it left a bad taste in the mouths of the crew members at the course, according to Jeff Plotts, director of agronomy.

“We didn’t get to finish the project, and we didn’t get to finish the deal,” Plotts says. “So, we had a rally cry that we actually had three extra days to prepare for the ’21 event, and we wanted it to be the absolute best event that it could be with those three extra days. We quickly got to work. It just kind of led the team to get after the golf course and try to make it as good as it could be for the ’21 event.”

He adds that the team’s focus for the past calendar year has gone into performing cultural practices on the course, aligning volunteer teams and communicating with the PGA Tour on requirements for the event.

To help with those cultural practices and “dress the course up” for the upcoming tournament, Lucas Andrews, assistant director of golf course maintenance, says the team has relied heavily on John Deere equipment.

That equipment includes tractor units to help with topdressing and 12 new John Deere 2700 triplex units to keep the fairways in shape. The team also added a few John Deere 2500 units into its fleet.

“This is a nice opportunity for us to try before you buy with a brand-new lease,” Andrews says. “So, we’re excited about the (results) we’re getting out of those. We’re really excited for our team to kind of get this one under their belt. It’s been a collective year of hard work, and we just want to get this one in the books and get focused in on the ’22 event.”

Andrews says the event may look different in years past with COVID protocols in place, but he still has high expectations.

“Our expectations don’t waver because of COVID; we just have to adapt to the world of COVID now,” Andrews says. “So, we always try to have a really good time and experience for our volunteers, for our team. We just have to figure out a way how to do that and be practical in the world of COVID and still produce the same great expectations. We’re not going to back down or use COVID as an excuse not to have the highest expectations for our team and what we do here.”