Really, How Many Balls Go in the Drink at 17 at Sawgrass?

by Ryan Ballengee on May 7, 2009 4:53 PM EDT

You may have seen my postcard from TPC Sawgrass' 17th hole today. On the postcard, I put down the fun fact that the course claims that 120,000 golf balls go in the drink each year.

To prove I just didn't make that stuff up, I got that from an Adam Barr story at GolfChannel.com.

The pond around the ferocious par-3 17th hole at TPC Sawgrass has drowned the hopes of golfers up and down the handicap ladder, and the balls those hopes rode on wait on the silt-lined bottom until divers bring them up…at the rate of 120,000 per year.

But, 120,000 seemed kind of steep to me. It seemed so steep to a reader of Shane Bacon at Dogs That Chase Cars that he developed a Powerpoint presentation and Excel spreadsheet in order to call bullsh*t on the folks at Sawgrass.

It is quite incredible.

A little Excel magic tells us that Ponte Vedra Beach gets, at a rough estimate, approximately 4,467 hours of daylight a year.

Going off the claim from the TPC that 120,000 golf balls go into the drink per year, we can calculate that for that number of balls to go in the water, 27 people per hour need to tee off at 17 and put their shot right into the drink. That’s once every 2.23 minutes.

So, under optimal conditions, for this postcard to be accurate someone has to put a ball in the water at 17 every 133 seconds for an entire year.

Given that our optimal conditions are completely, ridiculously, hilariously impossible, my conclusion is:

Damn you and your lying-ass postcards, TPC at Sawgrass.

Damn you indeed. Seriously, read the link at Shane's site. You will die laughing.

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As much fun as it is to shoot down stats like these – he left a few important points out:

His calculations were based on 27 people an hour teeing off at 17. IF Sawgrass were booked solid and started foursomes on 17 instead of 1 and ran on 8 minute starting times from sun up to sundown – there would be 30 different people hitting tee shots every hour. This also assumes that the groups start and finish the hole in 8 minutes. (yeah – that’s going to happen) (I believe Sawgrass starts on 10 minute intervals, though)

Another thing that Shane left off is the number of people who hit shot after shot after shot into the drink.

Here are a few more things that make that 120,000 number sound impossible – the course is pretty much closed for a couple of weeks before The Players, plus the week of the tournament – the average numbers to meet that number definitely don’t happen in these weeks. It rains in Florida – a lot. The course is closed some days, and other rainy days, play just slows down to a crawl. There are cold days in Ponte Vedra when the course is closed. And..I’m sure there are others…this is one darned expensive course. $30 muni’s can’t keep up the number of players it would take to rinse 120,000 balls in a year.

The number that supports the claim from Sawgrass is that they have 45,000 rounds on the course every year. With that number, they only need to average about 31 foursomes a day – that’s 5 hours of foursomes teeing off in 10 minute intervals with the every player putting an average of 3 balls in the water – not completly out of the range of possibility.

I think Shane is probably right – the number is probably a bit high – but it’s not impossible.

"this ball will fit in that fairway"

by courtgolf on May 7, 2009 5:43 PM EDT reply actions