The PGA Tour's Weird Reluctance to Embrace Players Championship History

One of the smartest things the Masters ever did was put every final round of the tournament, dating back to the dawn of televised coverage, up on its YouTube channel.

If I want, I can spend an afternoon watching the back nine of the 1968 Masters, as well as the aftermath in Butler Cabin, where it was revealed that Roberto De Vicenzo signed an incorrect scorecard, meaning there would be no playoff. Bob Goalby was the champion. I would encourage you to watch it sometime, just as a student of golf history. Both Goalby and De Vicenzo look miserable. It is the origin of one of the greatest golf quotes of all time: “What a stupid I am,” De Vicenzo said.

It’s remarkable how hard it is to find raw footage of final rounds from the other majors. You can find highlights here and there, particularly of historic wins, but rarely complete coverage. The Open Championship has worked to correct this, and so has the U.S. Open in recent years, but the PGA of America has been woefully inadequate in posting PGA Championship rounds. It’s a shame, because wonderful moments end up being forgotten, and golf’s history suffers for it.

If the Players Championship wants to put itself on equal footing with the majors — a talking point that has risen from the dead yet again this year — the PGA Tour might start by adding more of its final rounds to YouTube.

I went looking for Adam Scott’s victory in 2004 this week, yet found almost nothing. Sure, I can watch a highlight of Tiger Woods making his double-breaking, “better-than-most” putt on 17 for the 10,000th time, but I had to journey to the PGA Tour’s Facebook page just to see Scott’s up-and-down for bogey that won him the trophy. Nothing else exists on the Tour’s official channels.

I am old enough to remember what a big deal it was when Scott, just 23 years old at the time, won the Players. It felt like the beginning of greatness. And in a way, it was. We certainly expected more majors, but Scott’s longevity has been its own badge of honor. Twenty-two years later, he is the only player left from the 2004 tournament who will be in the field this week. He is absolutely the Last of His Kind.

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Why we can’t relive maybe the best detail of that closing finish, however, is baffling to me.

If you don’t remember, or were simply too young in 2004, you should know that Scott saved the trophy engraver from one of the great gaffes of all time. After Scott split the 18th fairway with his drive, the engraver working for Waterford Crystal, Sean Egan, began to etch his name into the crystal trophy.

After all, he had a two-stroke lead over Padraig Harrington. What could go wrong?

Scott proceeded to yank a 6-iron into the water left of the green. He now had to hit a nervous pitch and then make a scary six-footer to win, two things that were not his strong suit.

Somehow, Scott did both, averting disaster for himself and Egan. You can find the footage of the last few minutes, including the trophy gaffe, but only because Egan uploaded a Sky Sports version of the broadcast years ago.

Egan knows how close he came to his own Roberto De Vicenzo moment.

“I was almost finished with his surname when someone shouted in my ear “STOP!” Egan wrote. “Scott had put the ball in the water. Complete panic! There’s absolutely nothing you can do once the name is engraved on the glass. Thankfully, Scott rallied to clinch the tournament. Presumably the golfer was the second most relieved man on the course that day!”

The PGA Tour keeps telling us the Players is an important part of golf history, but I can name a dozen winners that I can’t watch on YouTube, including Steve Elkington, who won it twice. If the Tour wants to keep telling us how much the Players should matter, it should start acting like its history — the good and the bad — is essential to its story.