PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — The starter at TPC Sawgrass does not need to know the following story. Heads could roll so shhh! It never happened. What happens at the 17th hole stays at the 17th hole.
The story can now be told and Isaiah Salinda, a former Stanford University star playing in the Players Championship for the first time, told it on the lawn in front of the TPC Sawgrass clubhouse. Wednesday morning is the annual tradition of first-time Players Championship participants meeting, greeting and getting grilled by the media.
Salinda sat in one of the director’s chairs, basking in the golden morning sunlight and trying not to shiver in the brisk 50-degree weather.
So what happened that didn’t happen was Salinda playing TPC Sawgrass for the first time three years ago. It was a normal 18-hole round among friends and fellow Korn Ferry Tour pros that turned into a 36-hole day. Why not? It was late in the afternoon, the course wasn’t crowded, so Salinda’s group joined another foursome of pros at some point during the second round. They played an eightsome the rest of the way in. (Insert imaginary photo of the starting frowning and giving them the evil eye.)
So it was quite a sight when this army platoon of golfers walked off the 16th green, moseyed around the curve of the lake to the 17th tee.
As they’re reaching the tee, with multiple other money games and wagers already in progress, Salinda or someone says, “A dollar a yard for a hole-in-one?” The hole played 143 yards that day. So if someone made an ace, the other seven players had to pay him $143 apiece. (Don’t bother to reach for the calculator: seven times $143 equals $1,001.)
When it was Salinda’s turn to hit, he pulled out a 9-iron. “I didn’t hit it great,” he said. “I just covered the bunker and took a nice bounce to the right and trickled into the hole for a 1.”
Is this for real? He aced the 17th on his second try? “It’s no joke,” he said. “You can find it on the internet.”
They had been playing a two-man team skins game most of the day and Salinda and his partner were having a tough go.
“So I won $1,001 from that one shot,” he recalled, “so that was nice. I was pretty deep in the hole until then. That shot made up for everything.”
Salinda collected on the instant-ace bet, plus the 1 was worth a skin in the skins game.
An ace like that is a good time to put on a celebratory show and Salinda admitted that he did.
“Oh, everyone went nuts,” he said. “I was running around, throwing hats. I think I started running 100 yards to the green and I almost jumped in the water. I was chest-bumping everyone. It was just great!”
Was there any problem collecting on the bet from the other guys? “Oh, no, they gladly paid me,” Salinda said, probably using the word “gladly” improperly.
What are the odds of a first-time Players Championship participant having made an ace at the famed 17th hole on his second trip around the course? Pretty high.
Now, what are the odds of another first-time Players Championship participant having been in Salinda’s group to witness the ace? Ridiculously high.
Well, meet Matt McCarty, who broke through on the PGA Tour last fall by winning the Black Desert Championship. An hour after Salinda told his ace story, McCarty was in a second wave of Players first-timers who met with the media. There were two groups of the rookies because there was a bumper crop of 25 of them in attendance.
McCarty and his usual caddie were a team in that match and, McCarty recalls, “We were beating up on him (Salinda) that day. He was way down. But that shot was awesome, it was so cool. There was barely any light left in the day. I think we didn’t even really have enough light to play the 18th. Plus we stood there for a while and celebrated.”
McCarty said Salinda’s shot was even bigger, if that’s possible, because a couple of guys in the group had already staked shots inside 6 feet to that back right pin, where it is usually placed on Sunday during the tournament. So some potentially expensive birdies were sure to be made and then Salinda’s shot found its way past those other balls and into the cup.
“It was a little amazing with all those balls that were blocking,” McCarty said. “I don’t know if he was honest with you but I think he chunked that shot a little bit because it landed over the bunker, kind of skirted through the fringe and really rolled out.”
Salinda was honest, he admitted he “didn’t hit it great.” But there’s no room on the scorecard for that. It’s still a perfect 1.
It is fun to imagine those seven guys on the green, or in the bar later, each whipping out $143 in cash but that never happened. After an aging writer suggested that, McCarty chuckled. “Our generation is all electronic now.” Venmo. PayPal. Zelle. Whatever. Digital payments are practically painless. Or, at least, less painful than handing over real money.
The writer joked that he was hoping McCarty would say he wrote out a check, then followed up by asking if McCarty even owned a checkbook. He does write a few checks, he said, but he doesn’t have an actual checkbook. “With as much as we travel, I misplace too much stuff to take one with me.”
The first time McCarty played the 17th hole a few years earlier, he played with his caddie, Korn Ferry Tour player Cody Blick and a fourth he doesn’t remember. But McCarty does recall his first-ever shot at the 17th.
“I hit it in the water, short,” he said. “But knock on wood, I haven’t hit it in the water since.”
The island-green 17th hole will be the center of attention this week, as usual. Two years ago, it yielded three aces to Hayden Buckley, Aaron Rai and Alex Smalley. Last year, Ryan Fox made the only ace at 17.
Anything can happen at this hole, even in a practice round (editor's note: a first happened Wednesday). Tuesday, Players first-timer Ryan Gerard brought University of North Carolina golfer Keaton Vo inside the ropes as he walked from 16 to the 17th tee. There, he said, he talked Ko into borrowing a club and hitting a shot to the green. Gerard, a North Carolina alum, was just giving a nice moment to a fellow Tar Heel.
“I told him, You might as well whack one so he gets up there, no warmup, nothing, hits a smooth little 9-iron on the left side and it just kind of hung on to the land,” Gerard said. “We were pretty happy about it. I don’t think I’ve ever rooted for a golf ball to get on land that hard because it would have been really tough if he rinsed it in front of a bunch of people watching.”
So the gesture had a happy ending.
Wait, no it didn’t.
“Right after we did that, the Tour sent out a text saying, Don’t let people in under the ropes,” Gerard said.
Things happen at the 17th hole. What happens at 17 doesn’t always stay there, however.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as At TPC Sawgrass’s Famous Island 17th Hole, No Good Story Stays Untold.