GOLF:Oh, dear. Money can't guarantee everything, as those spectators smothered in raingear and cowered under umbrellas discovered on the eve of The Players yesterday.

While the spectacular, multi-million dollar project to construct a new Mediterranean Revival (if you don't mind) clubhouse and to install vacuums underneath the 18 rebuilt greens and fairways - to make the course play hard and fast - has been completed since Stephen Ames won here last year, the weather gods have contrived to spoil things by bringing grey, rain-laden clouds to this new date in summer.

Mind you, does it matter if it's wet and windy? The field for The Players championship is, arguably, the best in golf, with 49 of the world's top-50 - the injured Fred Couples is the absentee - competing, among them a healthy smattering of Europeans, including 10 of last year's winning Ryder Cup team.

Paul McGinley and Lee Westwood are the two to have missed out on a tournament that, to all intents and purposes, is placed fifth, behind the four majors, on the wish list of any professional with a tour card in his pocket.

And, as ever, the man who 144 players have in their sights is Tiger Woods. "We all thought Tiger had set the bar a little higher back in 2000. We never thought he was going to do it like that again," observed Ernie Els. "Now, obviously with the changes in his swing coming through, I think he's made (his game) better. His performances (through 2006 into 2007) have been unbelievable.

"I think if Tiger wasn't around I maybe could have won a couple more (majors)," Els continued.

"He's very dominant and he's been up there more consistently than any other player.

"But if you can win tournaments with him around, you know that you've beaten the best field ever to have played probably. You've really accomplished something."

Indeed, the Woods admiration society extends to just about everyone in the locker-room. As Phil Mickelson, his great adversary of recent years, agreed: "It's not like I'm trying to catch up on Tiger. I love the fact that I get to play against probably the best player that's ever lived and compete against him in his prime. When I do win tournaments, when I do win majors, it adds more credibility to those. So, I enjoy the challenge of trying to win with him in the field."

But whatever about the way the majors have been carved up, for the most part, among a select group of players - headed by Woods - for much of the past decade, The Players, for whatever reason, has been harder to claim.

In fact, of the world's current top-20 players, only Woods and Adam Scott have managed to win this title, proving that the Sawgrass course offers a greater variety of test - and opportunity - to players other than those who simply bomb it off the tee.

"Anyone can win here," claimed Woods. "That's the beauty of this golf course. There's really no advantage to taking out the driver and bombing it down there because of the trouble (off the fairways) and how everything pitches (in to the trouble)."

With the changes made to the course in the 14 months since Ames won, and despite the rain of recent days, the belief is that this week's tournament will place an even greater emphasis on shot-making and creativity, particularly around the greens where run-offs have been created during the course renovations.

The odds are against Ames successfully defending. No player has ever won back-to-back here, and only six have even followed up wins by finishing in the top 10, the most recent being Scott who was tied-eighth in 2004, a year after his breakthrough win on the US Tour.

Woods, for his part, will be attempting to win back-to-back on tour and has the advantage in his armoury of being the last player to win The Players having won the previous week on tour. That was in 2001, when Woods followed up his win in the Bay Hill Invitational with his only victory in The Players.

Despite the rain of recent days, and the forecast for more, the course is still likely to play firm because of the underground suction pumps.

"When the course is soft, you're basically just throwing darts," said Woods. "The fairways get so much wider and the slopes on the greens become irrelevant. You just fire at the flags.

"Now, with the firmer and faster (conditions), you have to play a proper shot in order to get the ball close. You can't just go out and fire at the flag."

All of which, you feel, will be right up Padraig Harrington's street. A two-time runner-up (in 2003 and 2004), Harrington is very much at home on this course, one that, critically, fits his eye. Also, the changes in the green complexes and the surrounds should also favour him.

"I like to use my short game to get up-and-down," he conceded. "I'm better at those courses than ones where, if you miss the fairway, you're chipping out to leave a hundred yards (approach)."

The two Irish players in the field head into this latest test - where single figures under-par could well win - in quite contrasting situations.

Harrington's seventh-placed finish in the US Masters has simply reaffirmed his belief that his game is almost where he wants it to be, and he has three top 10s (but no win) in nine tournaments this year.

For Darren Clarke, though, the year has not gone well, with five missed cuts (and one withdrawal, from last week's Wachovia championship due to a hamstring injury) in his nine outings on tour - in Europe and the States - this season. He is due a change of fortune, but this course, one of the toughest of them all, can cruelly expose any frailties in a player's game.

On that front, Clarke won't be alone. But the test presented by the TPC at Sawgrass over the coming four days should, for all that, be enthralling.