"We do that through not only visual monumentation..."
/Here's the PGA Tour's David Pillsbury, talking about the revamped TPC Sawgrass The Player's Stadium Course THE PLAYERS Stadium Course during the PGA Tour's Communications Summit:
The feedback has been extremely positive. The rough is very punitive. It will grow another inch and a half or two by the time we get to THE PLAYERS.
The idea is that the ball, unless it's hit perfectly, rolls into the rough. That's the way this golf course was designed, to play firm and fast. And that's the way it will play in May, and we are very excited to have our players out there, the best players in the world, with what we think is one of the greatest golf challenges in the world as a result in large part to these renovations and the masterpiece that Pete Dye created 25 years ago.
We obviously also focused on the clubhouse, along with a number of other areas that touch various constituents of THE PLAYERS. The clubhouse is critical to our proud partners. By the way, without their support, none of this would be possible, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, UBS and JeldWenn are the three partners that have really driven this process for us financially. But they also wanted a world class venue for their clients during the tournament. So we wanted to create a clubhouse that matched the iconic stature of this golf course. What we've created is something that has some majestic qualities. It adds a new dimension, a presence at Sawgrass that we simply didn't have before.
Just to give you some scale, 77,000 square feet. Just the tile for the roof weighs 680,000 pounds, two Boeing 747s. It is a massive building. It's also going to be a lovely building.
I've never heard massive, 77,000 square feet and 680,000 pounds likened to lovely!
It's going to be a building that will be a place where stories are told on the walls. Stories will be told by our teams, and that carries onto the golf course, with the improvements we've made to the experience itself.
Our mission is to bring to life the PGA TOUR experience across all of our TPCs starting here with the mother ship. We do that through not only visual monumentation but with caddies, caddies that tell you about great moments at THE PLAYERS Championship.
Monumentation. Take that Commissioner!