The Players Championship 2026
Overview
Dates: March 12, 2026 to March 15, 2026
Location: Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida USA
Course: TPC Sawgrass (THE PLAYERS Stadium Course)
Course Par: 72
Course Length: 7352
Prize Purse: $25000000
Well it wasn’t one of our best weeks with a bit of bad luck to add to the weeks woes. Jake Knapp withdrew 30 mins before his tee time and Rory pulled out with a back injury after 2 rounds.
Our 3 remaining picks made the cut but failed to ignite over the weekend with Jordan Speith coming closest at T11.
Preview
We’ve had several signature events already this season, but this is the week that the season really goes up a gear, with The Players Championship, hosted as ever at the fabled TPC Sawgrass. Arguably the strongest field of the season will assemble to try to secure the self-styled “fifth major”, which in 2025 was the first highlight of an incredible year for Rory McIlroy, who comfortably beat JJ Spaun in a 3-hole Monday playoff.
Looking back over the list of previous winners, it’s a real mixed bag. The early 2000s saw some surprising names emerge victorious (Stephen Ames, Craig Perks, Tim Clark), but in recent times as the profile of the event has risen, bigger names have tended to dominate, with Scheffler and McIlroy taking four of the last six editions, while Cam Smith and Justin Thomas filled in the intervening years. One consistent pattern however has been that this is a course that strongly favours accuracy, particularly off the tee. There are numerous hazards to negotiate and playing from the rough is extremely difficult. Should the course play very soft, this may change a little and favour the bombers a touch more, however the weather looks set to be fair for the majority of the four competition days. Putting is less of a factor here than at many courses and perhaps surprisingly, course form is less predictive than you might expect at such an idiosyncratic venue.
Overall tee-to-green performance coupled with driving accuracy looks to be where we should be focusing and we’ve found a selection of players whose stats suggest they are over-priced, all of whom bring some cracking recent form to the table.
As ever, the market leaders are Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy. Scheffler is readily enough ducked this week given that his iron play in particular appears to be some way below his very best and he’s cutting an increasingly frustrated figure on the course. Yet his price is around the same mark as you would expect if all aspects of his game were firing. McIlroy would have been very interesting, but the back injury that saw him withdraw from the Arnold Palmer would have to be a major concern, although if quickly resolved he’s likely to go close to retaining the title. But we feel there’s better value further down the list.
Headline pick:
Adam Scott (2.5 units win +7000, 2.5 units top 5 +1300)