Chad Ramey hit a shot in the final round of Players Championship that you don’t see every day: a 7-iron from 183 yards on the stadium’s par-3 13th that landed lightly on the left side of the green, took a slant and didn’t stop rolling until it disappeared into the hole.
An ace.
Ramey is first in the race.
“I couldn’t make any putts to fall, so not having to make putts, that was good,” Ramey said after signing for a one-under 71 that moved him to three under for the week and a likely top-30 finish in what is his fourth Players appearance.
Surprisingly, however, 1 wasn’t Ramey’s most unusual shot of the day.
This came on another par-3 – island-green 17 — where Ramey’s tee shot rolled through the back of the green and onto the rough strip that separates the putting surface from the fairway surrounding the green. But his ball did not stick for long. A moment or two after he stopped in the rough, he was thrown from his seat and fell down on the board. The ball looked destined for the water, but instead of bounding forward, it rolled back and came to rest hard on the fairway, leaving Ramey with a chip shot you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy.
Ramey has a history in 17. In the second round of the 2023 Players, he arrived at this hole with the lead. But then disaster struck. Point shot. We pass. Third shot from the drop zone. We pass. He eventually managed a 7-bogey, surrendered the lead and shot a 75. On Sunday, he finished T27.
ACTIvE THIS On Sunday, if Ramey didn’t want to play the second from the board, he had the option of taking a penalty and playing the third shot from drop zone. But with the hole cut into the lower fairway on the right side of the green, Ramey wanted no part of the drop. “Where that needle is,” he said later, “(the drop zone) is not where you want to be. So I just weighed the odds and decided it was worth taking a chance.”
Brad Faxon, calling the action on the NBC telecast, said he had never seen a player face this particular trouble on 17.
With one foot in the rough and the other on the board, Ramey pulled what appeared to be a lob wedge and drove the club into his ball. The high-wire act paid off. Ramey’s ball popped up and advanced about five feet to the green, from where Ramey two-putted for an adventurous bogey.
“Before I hit it, I was like, please, get the ball on the green,” Ramey said after the round. “It couldn’t have worked out any better.”
As Faxon reviewed a replay of the shot on television, he said, “You could hear (his club) hit wood first. He almost hit it off the toe like he was trying to get the bounce off of it.”
