SteveElling

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. -- Diversity, thy name is Dye.

Pete Dye, the celebrated architect of TPC Sawgrass was announced as a World Golf Hall of Fame inductee earlier this week and freely admitted that he has no idea why his most-infamous layout, host site of the Players Championship, annually creates such a wild leaderboard full of players with seemingly so little in common.

Beyond their prescribed total of 14 clubs in their respective bags, it's a complete melange of a cornucopia of a smorgasbord of a jigsaw puzzle of a bric-a-brac mix.

There are a variety of reasons we don't need to reiterate to explain the amalgamation, since we covered that ground in a story earlier this week, but heading into the final round on Sunday, has the board ever featured a more scattershot selection of PGA Tour players of various sizes, ages and physical capabilities?

Doubtful. It's almost absurdly diverse. Consider that of the 13 players tied for seventh or better:

* There's a 50-year-old, Bernhard Langer, who is seeking to become the eldest winner in event history. He's been playing for the past few months on the Champions Tour.

* There are four 40-somethings, including the two players in the final group, Paul Goydos and Kenny Perry. Fellow graybeards Greg Kraft, who began the year with limited exempt status, and Tom Lehman are also in the mix. Lehman turns 50 next spring.

* In continuing the 2008 youth theme in which five of the past six winners have been under age 30, a slew of 20-somethings, Sergio Garcia, Jeff Quinney and J.B. Holmes, are also among the leaders. Holmes is 24 years younger than Langer.

But more crazed, still, is the array of firepower the group represents. It's like howitzers against guys shooting spitwads. 

* Holmes, Garcia, Perry and Mickelson rank among the top 26 players on tour for length off the tee. 

* Goydos, the wise-cracking leader, doesn't have a muscle in his entire body and officially ranks third-to-last on the tour in driving distance, ahead of plinkers Fred Funk and Corey Pavin at a meager 265.2 yards a poke. Quinney ranks No. 182, ahead of only 14 players. Kraft hits it a not-so-mighty average of 258 yards but doesn't have enough rounds to rank in the computer. If he did, Kraft would rank second-to-last, in fact. Several LPGA players could blow it past all three of them.

And yet the aforementioned Funk is a past Players winner. So is Mickelson. Verybody playing well seemingly has a shot at the title on this comparatively shortish, tricky track.

Care to take a crack at projections a winner Sunday, because I have no eartly idea. Not a whiff of a sniff of a clue.

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. -- Kenny Perry, even at age 47, has the soft hands of a jeweler.

Not to mention the quiet feet of a cat burglar.

Earlier this week, Perry attended a Bible study at the nearby home of Fred Funk, who won the vaunted Players Championship title three years ago at age 49, the oldest player ever to take homs the massive crystal trophy.

So when nobody was watching, Perry sneaked through Funk's abode looking for the latter's trophy room. He went straight for the Players trophy when he found it, too.

"I was definitely snooping," Perry laughed.

He might be wrapping his mitts around his own trophy at this pace, because if the older guard has creaky nerves, it's hardly showing. Of the four players atop the leaderboard, three are 43 or older, including 50-year-old Bernhard Langer, a refugee from the Champions Tour who is playing for the 23rd time at TPC Sawgrass.

Come to think of it, Langer attended the Funk get-together as well.

"I think it's the type of golf course where it doesn't hurt to have played it a bunch," Langer said.

Perry has played 20 times and made it to the weekend in all but five instances. Langer has played 23 times and missed the cut only twice. These two have been alive for a combined 98 years, 62 of them as professionals.

One of the big storylines of the year has been that eight players in their 20s have won PGA Tour titles, including five of the past six. But at Sawgrass, all those at-bats over the years can't hurt. 

"Experience plays some part," Langer said. "It's more of a golf course where precision is more important than length."

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. -- Mostly, players have raved about the summertime-flavored setup at the Players Championship.

After a sweeping course makeover before the tournament was played last year, the fairways and greens are firm and fast, and TPC Sawgrass was surrendering a smattering of good scores Thursday to those who had their games truly dialed in.

But some offered dissenting views after the first round, including 2006 winner Stephen Ames, who dropped a profane review of the course setup on a PGA Tour employee stationed near the scoring area.

Ames had nearly holed his tee shot on the fly on the par-3 17th, only to watch the ball bounce about six feet in the air and straight into the water hazard that surrounds the green. Afterward, he was asked how close the tee shot came to going in the hole on the fly.

Ames, who shot 74, held up a thumb and forefinger. As for an assessment of how the course played, he selected a different finger entirely, if you catch our drift.

"I have said all along, with the changes, this course was going to be borderline," he said of its fairness factor after the 2007 revisions. "And that's exactly what it is. The balls don’t even make pitchmarks on the green, they're so hard."

A handful of other players saw shots on the 17th carom off the green and into the water, including Matt Kuchar, whose ball bounced twice on the green, and still plopped into the lake.

Ames said his approach shot on the 18th landed 50 feet short of the pin, yet rolled all the way off the back of the green. As he stomped away from the scoring area, Ames spotted a tour employee and let loose some steam.

"It's too &*%$#+ hard," Ames said, within earshot of several reporters. "Go ahead, keep building courses like this."

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. -- Trevor Immelman's lot in life has been easily described since he won the Masters title last month.

Aside from the perks of winning, it's been mostly awful.

For the second time in the past 13 months, Immelman came down with a stomach virus, forcing him to withdraw before the first round of the Players Championship on Thursday morning.

It was merely the latest personal speed bump since he slipped into the green jacket. Immelman took a week off after winning the Masters and then played at the Byron Nelson Championship, where he shot 78-75 to miss the cut. Of the 16 first-time major winners this decade, he was the first to miss the cut in his next start.

Last week at the Wachovia Championship, he shot 76-73 and also missed the weekend.

"Trevor is certainly disappointed with the timing of the illness, as the Players Championship is a tournament that he and all the players look forward to each year," said Jon Wagner, his agent. "His main focus now, though, is to use this time that he had previously scheduled off to get well and prepare himself for his next event."

Immelman, 28, returned home to Orlando, Fla., to recover. Last year before the Masters, Immelman came down with a bug and had to spend several hours in a hospital emergency room getting intravenous fluids, though he somehow managed to complete the entire tournament.