PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – With the strongest field in golf, it’s almost inevitable that some of the biggest names in golf would have an off week and miss the cut. But this year, thanks in part to a wild weather week, more of the world’s best players struggled than normal.
It took 2-over 146 to finish among the top 65 and make the cut. (Seventy-one golfers in all made it.) There was cut drama as Scott Piercy finished with a quadruple-bogey 7 at 17 and a three-putt bogey at 18 to go from comfortably inside the cutline to packing his bags at 3-over 147. Squeaking in on the number were former Players champion Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler, who has won two of his past three starts. Other big names weren’t so lucky.
Several players all firmly inside the top 20 in the world that had no answers for the wacky weather conditions that meant the 36-hole cut wasn’t made until Sunday afternoon.
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Most of them were doomed by the “luck of the draw,” as the late-early wave endured the worst of the rain on Friday and high winds when play resumed on Saturday. In all, 44 players made the cut among the early-late wave compared to 27 from the late/early wave.
TPC Sawgrass is a course that exposes any weakness in a player’s game and it did just that to some of golf’s best this week. Let’s take a closer look at what went wrong.