Previewing storylines ahead of the 50th Players Championship

Just when it seemed like the narrative surrounding men's professional golf might return to the course with the arrival of the 50th Players Championship, the “fifth major,” the PGA Tour's potential deal with the Public Investment Fund d Saudi Arabia and the future of Commissioner Jay Monahan have once again become hot topics. Tuesday.

Much of the talk leading up to the PGA Tour's flagship event has focused on the golfers who aren't there – reigning Masters champion Jon Rahm and other stars who compete in the rival LIV Golf League and the two-time Players Championship winner Tiger Woods, who is missing this week's tournament for undisclosed reasons.

But there are some big potential storylines ahead of the Players Championship, which begins Thursday at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.

Which bands are you most excited to watch this week?

Marc Schlabach: Obviously, there are the high-profile star groups – reigning FedEx Cup champion Viktor Hovland/Rory McIlroy/Jordan Spieth and Scottie Scheffler/Rickie Fowler/Justin Thomas are probably the best.

I'm curious to see how Swede Ludvig Åberg will perform in his first Players Championship. He will play with Patrick Cantlay and Adam Scott in the first two rounds. There's a reason only one golfer has won The Players in its debut since the tournament moved to TPC Sawgrass in 1982 (New Zealander Craig Perks in 2002).

Åberg, 24, is exceptionally talented and handled pressure well when competing for Team Europe at last year's Ryder Cup in Italy. The former Texas Tech star already has four top 25s and two top 10s this season. He has just entered the top 10 of the official world golf rankings for the first time in his career.

Paolo Uggetti: I'm going to go slightly off the chart here. Given that the season so far has largely been defined by the underdogs' winning tournaments, I'm curious to see how the group consisting of Jake Knapp, Nick Dunlap and Matthieu Pavon fares. All three have already won tournaments this season, but all three are still considered distant.

Few eyes will be on this trio, but given that we've never seen Dunlap or Knapp work their way around TPC Sawgrass, I'm curious to see how they'll approach a course that demands some serious shooting.

This event has never seen a repeat victory. Will Scottie Scheffler be the first to succeed?

Schlabach: If Scheffler succeeds as he did last week in winning the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill for the second time in three years, he will be very difficult to beat every week.

Last year he ran away with a 5-shot victory at the Players Championship, so he'll come into TPC Sawgrass extremely confident.

In 2023, Scheffler finished fifth in strokes gained: off the tee (4.637), fourth on approach (7.529) and 48th in putting (.107) among players. He led the field in driving distance (305.9 yards) and hitting 75 percent of greens in regulation.

Scheffler will attempt to become the first player to defend his Players Championship title. There hasn't been a player who won one week and then defended a title the next week since Tiger Woods in 2007 – he won the PGA Championship and then defended at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational.

As much as Scheffler has played over the past year – and as good as he did last week – it wouldn't surprise me at all.

Uggetti: It's amazing what a mallet putter can do for you. Just a few weeks ago, we were talking about how Scheffler could waste another all-time ball-striking season due to poor putting. Now we wonder if he will make history by winning this tournament two years in a row.

That shows how good and talented Scheffler is. Mark has the stats to prove it, but what was even more telling from Bay Hill was the confidence Scheffler exuded on Sunday. The improvement in putting seemed to only improve his ball striking and short game. We even had a few animated punches.

Maybe this sudden putter improvement is an aberration, or maybe it's just Scheffler's hot streak. Either way, it's safe to say that the world's No. 1 player has more confidence this week than he did two or three weeks ago. Rehearsing in this room is obviously impossible, but if anyone can do it, it's Scheffler.

How big is it that Tiger Woods isn't playing this week?

Schlabach: Woods' absence is a big problem because it's the flagship event of the PGA Tour. He now serves on the tour's board of directors as director of players and was recently named vice president of PGA Tour Enterprises. The 15-time major champion was intimately involved in the tour's overhaul, alongside other player managers.

After playing just 24 holes at the Genesis Invitational at Riviera Country Club outside Los Angeles in February, there was hope that Woods would show up at TPC Sawgrass as a final tune-up before the Masters, the first major championship of the season. Instead, he will apparently go a full two months between official tour starts — unless he competes in the Valspar Championship next week in Palm Harbor, Fla., which seems unlikely.

The two-time Players Championship winner hasn't made his TPC Sawgrass debut since 2019, which must be disappointing for tournament organizers.

“He’s kind of the heart of golf, in my opinion, and every time he plays it’s a spectacle,” Xander Schauffele said.

Uggetti: I feel like it's hard to know now what is or isn't a big deal with Tiger. In theory, playing more before the Masters (like he did in 2019) would do wonders for his form. Then again, this is the first time Woods has had an ankle fusion, and no one knows his body better than him.

He said he wants to play once a month (he hasn't even played two rounds since the Hero World Challenge), but if he doesn't play until Augusta has his body ready for those hills , so be it.

Has golf’s “fifth major” suffered from the divide between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour?

Schlabach: There's no doubt that the migration of PGA Tour players to LIV Golf over the past three years has hurt the Players Championship field. It's not just reigning Masters champion Jon Rahm and former major winners Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Cameron Smith and others who are missing.

They include aging players like Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter, Paul Casey and Henrik Stenson and middle-of-the-pack golfers Charles Howell III and Jason Kokrak. These names have helped the PGA Tour build one of the sport's best fields on one of the toughest courses in the world.

You can't deny that defections haven't reduced the depth of the Players Championship.

“I don’t think it helps the tournament,” Schauffele said. “Yeah, I mean, I think you'd like these players to play, in an ideal world. … We're definitely beating a dead horse, in my opinion. I mean, everyone kind of knew what was going to happen when they made a decision, and that was probably the most likely outcome, which was that people were doing different tours at that point.

“I know the guys are working to get everyone back together, but in the meantime, I'm kind of on the right track, that's what it is.”

Uggetti: The “best golf course” is no longer the best golf course. If anything, players moved from the Tour's first event to the event that suffered the most from both LIV defections and the Tour's struggles to deal with the aftermath.

Imagine a scenario this week where Rahm faces Scheffler for the tournament that is supposed to be the major tournament of the Tour. Instead, we all have to wait until the four major tournaments to get a real sense of how the world's best stack up against each other.

PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan said Tuesday that he and PIF President Yasir Al-Rumayaan want to “silence the noise and unleash golf's global potential.” What if we started by bringing together all the best players in the world in the same tournaments again? So maybe next we can worry about golf's global potential.

Who will win the trophy on Sunday?

Schlabach: Scheffler. He plays head and shoulders better than everyone. What a way to mark the 50th anniversary with the first consecutive winner.

Uggetti: So much says Scheffler, but if this golf season has taught us anything, it's that the unexpected is likely to happen. How about a guy who plays with Scheffler the first two days? Justin Thomas is quietly moving in the right direction, and I see this is a week where he's putting everything together.