PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – It’s one of the most beautiful golf courses on Tour, but it doesn’t come without hard work.
“It’s a great responsibility, but it’s a beautiful place with a lot of history, and to think that you’re a small part of that is pretty awesome,” TPC Sawgrass director of golf course operations Jeff Plotts said.
If you know the history of TPC Sawgrass, you know that while the Stadium Course was being constructed, designer Pete Dye used goats to clean up the course. That was back in the 1970′s and ‘80′s. Now, in 2025, course maintenance is a bit different.
“It’s a long process, but it’s a lot of fun,” Plotts said. “The coordination that goes into it, we just have a great team that has been doing this for a long time. It becomes much easier.”
It’s all led by Plotts, who oversees 85 year-round staff members and the 100 additional volunteers from around the world who help out just for The Players Championship. Volunteers work at other golf courses or are college students gaining experience.
“I’m really proud of our team and our team’s effort,” Plotts said. “It takes a lot of dedication to get up at 3 o’clock in the morning and get here to work and try to go through it all day, and you may not leave until 10 or 11 o’clock at night.”
Take a guess how long you may think almost 200 agronomy crew members take to get the entire 7,245-yard course up to par for each round of competition?
“Mowing the greens to changing the hole locations to preparing all the short grass, we can do that in about a two, two-and-a-half-hour timeline,” Plotts said.
Each year, the course changes, and it takes about that long to prepare for the tournament, too.
“We start to prepare for this year’s event a year in advance,” Plotts said. “Actually, during this event is when we begin our prep and plans.”
While thousands of fans roam around the course admiring the best golfers in the world and equally admiring the scenery, Plotts is more of a perfectionist with his craft.
“In the heat of the battle, the day-to-day type stuff, I don’t really focus on the things that are good,” Plotts said. “I’m focused on the things that are not. To some degree, that’s a curse, but it’s what we do for trying to provide the best products that we can.”
But every once in a while, he has that one pinch-me moment.
“Certainly, a beautiful golf course and to be able to experience it first thing in the morning,” Plotts said. “It’s quiet and the shadows and those types of things as the sun’s rising and then you get a chance to do it again in the evening. Those are the moments that you kind of go, ‘this is pretty cool’.”
Plotts enjoys every part of the course. It’s too hard to pick a favorite.
“The reality is every hole is like a child,” Plotts said. “I don’t have one particular hole that I favor over another. There’s just some that give me a little bit harder time than others.”
Plott’s staff also manages the Dye’s Valley Course, including the entire landscape of TPC Sawgrass’s footprint. He has worked for the course for a decade and moved to Florida after working at TPC Scottsdale. The University of Georgia alum graduated with a degree in Horticulture Science. He chose this career because his grandfather introduced him to gardening, and his father wanted him to get into coaching, but he wanted to get into agriculture.
“It’s kind of like coaching,” Plotts said. “You have a big team, and you’re kind of working towards goals and very similar to coaching. Yet I’m still a farmer, an urban-type farmer, but I’m a farmer nonetheless.”