Rory McIlroy continues to sit on the front page of the leaderboard, but TPC Sawgrass still finds ways to put its claws into him at The PLAYERS Championship.

A tale of two waves took place Thursday in the opening round of the 2025 Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass. Pete Dye's devilish design gave early goers everything they could handle before conditions eased in the afternoon and gave way to a trio of surprising first-round leaders in Camilo Villegas,

Few have the experience of playing the Stadium Course as McIlroy and certainly not three of the players directly ahead of him on the leaderboard.