how Matt Kuchar won The Players Championship

Golf is impossible to predict as it is. Throw in the mystery that is the TPC Sawgrass, and there’s no telling who beats the strongest and deepest field in golf. You’ve heard the line about there being horses for courses? This is more like predicting the dot race on video screens at a baseball game.

Think of Sawgrass and the image of Fred Couples comes to mind as a two-time winner. The first two times Couples was at Sawgrass, he missed the cut. The next year, he won. And the  Mizuno JPX-800 Irons following year, he made the cut with one shot to spare. Davis Love III, another two-time winner, captured his first Players Championship in his seventh try. He missed the cut three times and was disqualified once before then.

"There’s no other course that less people have worked out than this one," Geoff Ogilvy said, who is still trying to do just that. He closed with a 69 on Sunday. It was only his third round in the 60s in 11 years at The Players Championship. This from a guy who has won a U.S. Open and two World Golf Championships. He’s got a little bit of game.

"Everyone who has played here, they have never really been that consistent here," Woods said. "I mean, everyone. Going from the time Jerry Pate won, no one has really contended here or been in contention 70, 80 percent of the time. Some golf courses, you get certain guys playing well there no matter what."

By now, everyone knows that Sawgrass is not as friendly as Firestone or Torrey Pines for the 14-time major champion. When he tied for 40th last week, it was the fifth time he has finished out of discount golf clubs the top 30. Woods has never finished out of the top 30 more than twice at any other tournament.

Steve Stricker and David Toms, both reliable customers, have missed as many cuts as they have made at Sawgrass.

Throw in the other three players from the "Big Four" of that generation — Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els and Vijay Singh — and it doesn’t get much better. Mickelson had a chance to win only once at Sawgrass, the year he won in 2007. Singh’s only good chance was in 2001, when he was runner-up to Woods. Els never has come close.

Rory McIlroy is not off to a roaring start at Sawgrass. In his three times at The Players Championship, he has yet to make par or make it to the weekend. This year, he became the first No. 1 player in the world to miss the cut at Sawgrass since Greg Norman in 1996. McIlroy is only 23, and he’ll figure it out one of these days — maybe even next year.

It should come as no surprise that of the PGA Tour events that have been around for at least 30 years, The Players Championship is the only one without a back-to-back winner.

Now consider this: Despite a level of consistency unseen in this generation — 72 wins over 15 years, and finishing among the top three in 44 percent of his tournaments — he has only seriously Mizuno MX-1000 irons contended twice at Sawgrass. He was runner-up to Hal Sutton in 2000 and picked up his only win the next year.