Sawgrass from scratch: 10 key figures reminisce on the purchase and building of the TPC course

The PGA Tour has come a long way since 1978, when it began construction on its flagship Tournament Players Club, the Stadium course at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.

The project cost less than $5 million (including $1 for the 417 acres of swampy land, thanks to the generosity of developers Paul and Jerome Fletcher). That price tag stands in stark contrast to the $60 million that's been spent since the 2006 Players Championship to renovate the course and build a new clubhouse. To celebrate the refurbishment, the Tour reunited the people responsible for envisioning, planning, financing and building that original Sawgrass course, a layout that made history and launched the Tour as an amazingly successful business entity. Here are their memories, excerpted from their reunion last March at Tour headquarters.

In The Beginning ...

Deane Beman, PGA Tour Commissioner: I was on the policy board (in 1973) when commissioner Joe Dey and the board voted to move forward with the idea of the Tournament Players Championship, which would be played at a different site every year. I became commissioner in '74, and it became clear that for many reasons rotating courses was not working well. We came to the conclusion that we needed to have our own place.

My son was on spring break — he was 12 or 13 — when we came down to Jacksonville for a tournament I was playing in at Deerwood, and I asked one of the officials if I could find a place to take my son to play.

He said, "Go out Beach Boulevard to A1A, then seven or eight miles south, and on the left there's this place called Sawgrass."

He said that not very many people knew where it was. The original Sawgrass was quite a course. It still is. I cut the afternoon short, went back to those tournament officials and told them what I was really looking for. We made an agreement with the banks and made modifications so that we could hold (the Players) tournament there. That's how we got to Jacksonville.

When I thought the Players Championship had to get to the next level, the group that owned Sawgrass wasn't willing to sell us the course, so we started looking for property. The first time I saw this piece of property, you went in at your own peril. Paul Fletcher showed me around. Pete Dye and his engineers wanted to know what kind of soil it had, so test holes were dug.

The first test hole we looked at had the biggest water moccasin in it. It must have been five feet long and as big around as your arm. That was my first look at this property.

Bob Dickson, PGA Tour Director of Marketing: Deane and I used to play golf against each other. In 1977 I was leaving the Tour and realized that I needed to get a real job for the first time in my life.

Deane initially hired me to look at property. The land here is flat, about six feet above sea level. It was a solid forest. The word swamp never left our mouths — we let other people say that.

Beman: After a lot of discussion we ended up with the $1 deal. That gave us the opportunity we had with the great community leaders who put up about $1 million in capital. The management of the PGA Tour was not permitted to put up any of the Tour's money to do the project, so we had to do this without any money.

Paul Fletcher, President Fletcher Land Development: We were a little behind on the mortgage payments at this point, so Chase wanted us to enhance our collateral.

It was not easy to give away 417 acres for $1. We were kind of fending off Chase.

Vernon Kelly, Project Manager:Everybody thinks, "My God, 417 acres for $1? That's the deal of the century." It was, truly, but the Fletchers had the vision to realize what the course would mean.