The PGA Tour’s best have been playing for big money and points for most of the last month, but the ante is upped this week.
The Players Championship is the PGA Tour’s flagship event, and while the somewhat-tired “fifth major” debate has been rekindled, the spoils of winning are significant enough. The winner gets $4.5 million from a $25 million purse plus 750 FedEx Cup points—the same points outlay as the four majors.
A field of 123 will take on the iconic Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass, a smaller field from the 144 of years past due to pace of play and the March sunlight available in Northeast Florida. The original field was 120, but Brooks Koepka is back (and eligible via his 2023 PGA Championship win) and via the terms of Returning Member Program, he will not take the place of another PGA Tour member and two more players will be added to keep threesomes intact.
World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler and No. 2 Rory McIlroy are gunning for third Players Championships, which has never been done. McIlroy withdrew Saturday from the weekend at the Arnold Palmer Invitational but is expected to defend his Players title. He defeated J.J. Spaun last year in a three-hole aggregate playoff on Monday.
Spaun saw his title hopes drown at the island-green 17th, one of the most famous holes in the world. (But he would win the U.S. Open three months later.) The closing stretch of 16–17–18 is as good as any on the PGA Tour, with a risk-reward par-5, the island one-shotter and a closing par-4 that demands accuracy off the tee.
Pete Dye’s masterpiece will be green and ready to take on the game’s best, and it famously doesn’t reward any one type of player. Bombers (McIlroy), short hitters (Tim Clark) and out-of-nowhere long shots (Craig Perks) have all won. And five of the last six editions have been decided by either one shot or in a playoff, so expect suspense late Sunday afternoon at the home of the PGA Tour.
2026 Players Championship full field
123 players
Åberg, Ludvig
Bauchou, Zach
Berger, Daniel
Bezuidenhout, Christiaan
Bhatia, Akshay
Bradley, Keegan
Brennan, Michael
Bridgeman, Jacob
Burns, Sam
Campbell, Brian
Cantlay, Patrick
Castillo, Ricky
Cauley, Bud
Clark, Wyndham
Cole, Eric
Conners, Corey
Coody, Pierceson
Dahmen, Joel
Davis, Cam
Day, Jason
Dou, Zecheng
Echavarria, Nico
English, Harris
Ewart, A.J.
Finau, Tony
Fisk, Steven
Fitzpatrick, Matt
Fleetwood, Tommy
Fowler, Rickie
Fox, Ryan
Gerard, Ryan
Glover, Lucas
Gotterup, Chris
Greyserman, Max
Griffin, Ben
Grillo, Emiliano
Hall, Harry
Harman, Brian
Henley, Russell
Higgo, Garrick
Highsmith, Joe
Hisatsune, Ryo
Hodges, Lee
Hoey, Rico
Hoge, Tom
Højgaard, Nicolai
Højgaard, Rasmus
Homa, Max
Hovland, Viktor
Hubbard, Mark
Hughes, Mackenzie
Im, Sungjae
Jaeger, Stephan
Kanaya, Takumi
Keefer, Johnny
Kim, Michael
Kim, S.H.
Kim, Si Woo
Kirk, Chris
Kitayama, Kurt
Knapp, Jake
Koepka, Brooks
Lee, Min Woo
Li, Haotong
Lowry, Shane
MacIntyre, Robert
Matsuyama, Hideki
McCarthy, Denny
McCarty, Matt
McGreevy, Max
McIlroy, Rory
McNealy, Maverick
Meissner, Mac
Mitchell, Keith
Moore, Taylor
Morikawa, Collin
Mouw, William
Noren, Alex
Novak, Andrew
Olesen, Thorbjørn
Pavon, Matthieu
Pendrith, Taylor
Penge, Marco
Phillips, Chandler
Poston, J.T.
Potgieter, Aldrich
Putnam, Andrew
Rai, Aaron
Ramey, Chad
Reitan, Kristoffer
Riley, Davis
Rodgers, Patrick
Rose, Justin
Roy, Kevin
Schauffele, Xander
Scheffler, Scottie
Schenk, Adam
Schmid, Matti
Scott, Adam
Smalley, Alex
Smith, Jordan
Smotherman, Austin
Spaun, J.J.
Spieth, Jordan
Stevens, Sam
Straka, Sepp
Taylor, Nick
Theegala, Sahith
Thomas, Justin
Thompson, Davis
Thorbjornsen, Michael
Valimaki, Sami
van Rooyen, Erik
Vegas, Jhonattan
Vilips, Karl
Walker, Danny
Whaley, Vince
Woodland, Gary
Yellamaraju, Sudarshan
Young, Cameron
Yu, Kevin
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