Course Profiles / TPC Sawgrass (THE PLAYERS Stadium Course)
Course Profile

TPC Sawgrass (THE PLAYERS Stadium Course):
what wins here.

THE PLAYERS Championship · 7 editions, 2019–2025 · 2,751 rounds analysed

Course-fit weights
OTT 25% · neutral
APP 27% · rewarded
ARG 23% · less decisive
PUTT 25% · neutral
Derived by regressing finishing position on strokes gained at this course, measured against the tour-wide baseline, then tested on seasons the model had never seen. Based on 581 player-events.

What the data says

Across 7 editions (2019–2025), approach play is the category that most separates players who contend here from those who do not — 27% of the model's weighting, against 23% for around the green.

The winners tell a partly separate story: in 3 of the last 6, the champion's best category for the week was approach play. That matches what the model weights, which is the cleaner case: the same skill that separates the field also tends to decide the tournament.

How the winners won

Strokes gained per round for every champion here since 2019. The green figure is that winner's best category for the week.

YearWinnerTo ParOTTAPPARGPUTTTotal
2025Rory McIlroy-12+0.66+1.94-0.19+1.24+3.65
2024Scottie Scheffler-20+1.61+1.59+0.77+0.31+4.28
2023Scottie Scheffler-17+1.13+1.90+1.26+0.03+4.32
2022Cameron Smith-13-1.30+1.66+0.35+2.88+3.60
2021Justin Thomas-14+0.86+1.60+0.75+0.41+3.63
2020Hideki Matsuyama-9+1.46+2.23+0.34+4.28+8.30
Method. Weights come from regressing top-20 finishes on players' strokes gained in each category, using only rounds played before each event, and comparing each course against the tour-wide baseline — so a weight measures what this course rewards more than golf generally does, not simply which skills help. Weights are kept only where they predicted results out of sample; where they did not, we say so. We tested our previous method, found it did not predict, and published that too: how the model works.

This week's field, ranked.

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