The record of 26 birdies in one tournament in the history of the most prestigious tournament on the PGA Tour was broken in the final round of the 2024 period, by golfer outside the top 100 in the world, 34-year-old Sam Ryder.
Sam Ryder competes at The Players 2024. Photo: AFP
The governing organization of the PGA Tour has considered recognizing the birdie record at The Players since the event took up residence on the par72 Stadium course at the TPC Sawgrass golf complex in Florida, since 1982.
From then until last year, Fuzzy Zoeller scored the most birdies: 26 times on the way to runner-up in 1994, while the 25 times belonged to Greg Norman (1994), Rickie Fowler (2012), McIlroy (2014) and Harold Varner III (2018).
But in 2024, Sam Ryder turns Zoeller into a former record holder. In the professional summary, on the finish line, Ryder caught up with Zoeller with a birdie in hole 14 and then surpassed the American senior by repeating this score for the 27th time in hole 16. At this time, Ryder became the new record holder. birdie in The Players history.
Rory McIlroy was five holes behind Ryder, hitting 26 birdies at hole 16. Four holes later, the former world number one from Northern Ireland had a chance to catch up with Ryder but was unsuccessful. In that part, Rory scored a series of pars before bogeying hole 18. A mistake at the end of the tournament caused him to finish -9, later finishing T19.
The Players 2024 ends on March 17, with the cup and $3 million belonging to reigning number one on OWGR Scottie Scheffler with a win mark of -4,5.
As for Ryder, despite recording a record of 27 birdies, he only finished T16 with a score of -10 because he still had 10 bogeys, two double bogeys and one triple bogey. “That result shows that my performance is unstable. But anyway, I feel great about owning the record," Ryder said on pgatour.com.
T16 position helps Ryder this week rank 101st on the world professional men's golf table (OWGR), 13 places higher than last week. Meanwhile, PGA Tour professional statistics from the beginning of the 2024 season to March 23 recorded that Ryder combined a record of 3 birdies at The Players to reach a total of 27 birdies, thus increasing 89 places to rank T45 in hole scoring - first.
Quoc Huy
