Young or old, winning on the PGA Tour is just hard work

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — Another unrelenting wave of 20 somethings breaching the shores of the PGA Tour has the sport abuzz and once again swelled the pool of talent whose reach stretches to all corners of the globe.

Fearless and fueled by advances in fitness, equipment, training, nutrition and teaching, and sharpened by first-class golf programs on the high school and collegiate levels and the Web.com Tour, this youthful generation that grew up inspired by Tiger Woods is ripe and ready to win right away.

The best of this loaded and abundant age bracket heading into today's start of the stacked Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass are world No. 1 and four-time major winner Rory McIlroy and No. 2 Jordan Spieth, the reigning Masters champion.

But when asked if a rivalry with Spieth, 21, would get his juices flowing, McIlroy, 26, shrugged.

"Last year it was Rickie (Fowler), this year it's Jordan, might be someone else later, and it could have been Tiger (Woods)," McIlroy said Wednesday. "There's been four or five rivalries over the past year. So it doesn't really do anything for me. As long as I'm one of them, the other can be whoever it is."

And it could be a host of players.

McIlroy, Spieth, Patrick Reed, Jason Day and other 20 somethings have won 10 tournaments this season, prompting many media outlets to opine that the torch has been passed from elders such as Woods and Phil Mickelson to the millennials.

But 12 events have been won by players in their 30s, three others by those in their 40s. And Woods, 39, and Mickelson, 44, who has finished second in the last two majors, aren't ready to start reading their golf obits.

In other words, it's just plain hard to win on the PGA Tour these days.

"The talent seems very strong at the moment," said Geoff Ogilvy, 37, who has won 13 titles worldwide, including the 2006 U.S. Open and a couple of WGCs. "I think the difference now, the older guys, the guys on the back half of their career, 35 plus, seem to be playing well longer. They are finding ways to stay in the mix. And guys coming out of school are better than they've ever been.

" … So if you've got more guys playing well deeper into their career, and more guys starting stronger than ever before, that just creates more depth.

"And it makes it tougher to win out there."

Nowhere is that more true than in The Players, the Tour's flagship event.

The depth of talent in the field and the TPC Sawgrass track combine for an epic examination of the game's best players this week.

Featuring the toughest field in golf, winning cases can be made for every one of the 144 players in the field.

No player has dominated the tournament; no player in the 41-year history of the event has gone back-to-back. There is no horse for the course, which, the saying goes, tests everyone and favors no one.

"This tournament's as tough as any," McIlroy said. "You're trying to beat the best players in the world on a golf course that again doesn't really favor anyone. Any week that you win you have to play the best golf, but there's certain tournaments you go to and you could sort of count on two hands who really has a chance to win that week, whether it be because of the conditions or the setup of the golf course or whatever. But here you could pick basically the entire field and feel like they have a decent chance to win."

Woods, by far the dominant player of his generation, is one of only six players to win at least two Players, with Davis Love III, Fred Couples, Steve Elkington, Hal Sutton and Jack Nicklaus, the only to win three, the others.

Woods said his pedestrian track record around this place has as much to do with the course and it does with the strength of the field.

"It's really a tricky golf course," Woods said. "When you're on, this golf course doesn't seem that hard. You feel like every round you should shoot 67 or lower. Then you get days where, God, I feel like I can't break 75 here. It's one of those places. It's very polarizing, you either have it or you don't."

Sergio Garcia, who at 19 in 1999 was going to be the game's next best thing and chase Tiger's tail for decades, counts the 2008 Players among his eight Tour titles in addition to 11 on the European Tour.

As one of the game's best ball-strikers, it's not surprising that he loves the course, which requires precision more than power.

"It's the kind of golf course that asking you for a lot of different shots. It's really pushing you to the limits," Garcia said. "The greens are fairly small, so you have to be accurate, not only off the tee but into the greens. If you hit a good shot you're always going to have a birdie putt. And if you miss the greens, then chipping is very challenging.

" … Ball striking is very, very important here because you can't be going into these greens from the rough every time. The greens are too small and if they get a little firm, too difficult to hold if you're going from the rough all the time."

Spieth said the course plays well for him — if he's on his game.

"But if I go out there and I'm struggling with a certain ball flight, then it's going to eat you up," he said.

Ogilvy provided a Cliff Notes version of the course that is downright scary.

"There are short holes, there are long holes. You have to move the ball both ways, and you have to do that on the same hole a lot," he said. "You have to play well in the wind, you have to have an amazing short game and you have to be a very good putter. This is the most complete test of any course we play on a regular basis.

" … You would have thought Tiger would have found the key to this place, because he figured out every other place where he played a lot. Akron, Bay Hill, Doral, Torrey, Augusta. He worked out the recipe there.

"But here … this course is just ruthless."

As is the field.