It's Players Championship week, the greatest field in golf, on golf's greatest stadium!

So let the debates begin, because we'll hear a ton of them this week. Should this be golf's fifth major? The LPGA did it a few years back by adding the Evian Masters as its fifth major, so why not? Is this the greatest finish in all of golf? It does have drama around every corner, volatility, a Par 5, 3, then 4 that create excitement and opportunity for both fans and players - so my vote would be that it certainly is golf's greatest finish. However the large debate, and the one that most players will argue about, is the one that surrounds a certain famous hole like the water that surrounds its green.

The 17th hole at Sawgrass, the "Island Green", even your Great Aunt Selma would recognize its famous landscape. Fans love it, TV eats it up, and the players do anything they can to try and pretend it's not the first thing they think about every morning on the week of the Players. The best players in the world will be quoted as saying, "It's too late in the round, we don't have time to rebound from a bad swing" or "there's nowhere to miss it, no bail out shot". They also talk about how some of them start thinking about the hole as early as the 10th tee each day, and that they dread that famous walk from the 16th green to the 17th tee as they try not to look at the island putting surface, but that the island seems to almost stare back at them.

We've seen so many car crashes here in the past, Len Mattiace and Paul Goydos are two out of many that lost it all on this hole. It almost happened last year to Martin Kaymer - this year's defending champion - and he won by a foot. Robert Gamez in 1990 and then again Bob Tway in 2005 recorded a record-high score of 12 on this little hole. With all due respect to the best players in golf, and with all due respect to the 12th hole at Augusta National, for all the above reasons and much more, this is why the 17th hole at Sawgrass is hands down the best Par 3 in golf.

Its a mere 137 yards, in today's game a Sand Wedge or Gap Wedge for most of these players. From inside 150 yards for the best in the world you shouldn't be looking for a bail out, you should be flag hunting. You also shouldn't feel the right or entitlement to have time to recuperate from a disaster on this hole, that's the point. It says to you, right to your face, if you're the best in the world and you deserve to win this championship, then you should be able to control your nerves, clear your mind, and hit your target.

So this week when we wait for those leaders to come down the back nine on Sunday, remember to pause and thank Pete and Alice Dye. They built this modern day masterpiece, and if it weren't for the fact that they dug all the best soil from that area of the golf course leaving an almost natural island of dirt in what was to be a large pond, we wouldn't have this iconic hole. In fact it was Alice who said to a reluctant husband Pete, "let's just leave it an island".

From every golf fan around the world Alice, thank you, and on behalf of all Tour players, "Pete, why did you listen?".