PONTE VEDRA BEACH — His cellphone buzzed around 7 a.m., less than two hours after Danny Walker woke up but earlier than he ever truly expected to feel it vibrate. As first alternate at the 51st Players Championship, the 29-year-old PGA Tour rookie who has lived in Jacksonville area for five-and-a-half years assumed getting into the event on Thursday would be a long shot; he’d been first alternate in two other tour events in his career, getting in one time and going home early the other. Yet there was the PGA Tour official calling to inform Walker that Jason Day had withdrawn and Walker now had an 8:46 tee time off the 10th hole at TPC Sawgrass.
“It meant the world to me,” said Walker, already at the course at the time. “I wanted to play in this event since I was a little kid, especially living locally. I watched it a bunch of times the last few years, so yeah, I couldn’t have been more excited.”
So excited that Walker needed a moment to collect himself, retreating to the player parking lot. “I went and sat in my car for a few minutes afterwards and just kind of let it hit me a little bit, maybe let a tear out,” he said. “But, no, it was all great.”
The display of emotions is understandable given how Walker’s career was sputtering only a few years earlier, the former University of Virginia golfer contemplating whether he could make it in pro golf. There were a few weeks in late 2021 where Walker worked as a server at a local restaurant, Bahama Breeze, the brief “real world” job convincing him he wasn’t quite ready to give up on himself.
As if getting into the field wasn’t enough, Walker’s pairing was its own level of crazy. In filling Day’s spot, Walker was now playing beside Jordan Spieth and Wyndham Clark. “Never met either of them before,” Walker said, “so that was something, too.”
Walker had never met Wyndham Clark or Jordan Spieth, let alone played with them, before Thursday’s opening round at TPC Sawgrass.
Jared C. Tilton
If there were nerves early, they didn’t necessarily show, Walker splitting the fairway with his opening tee shot en route to a par and making birdie on the par-5 11th. The good news for Walker: He’d played the course more than a hundred times since moving here after growing up in Sarasota. The bad news is never under championship conditions, the difficult of the course eventually catching up to him.
All things considered, Walker felt like he handled himself well, shooting a one-over 73 to sit seven shots off the early lead set by Lucas Glover. The highlight of the day: hitting the par-3 17th and rolling in the 15-foot putt for a birdie.
Walker earned his PGA Tour card for 2025 thanks to finishing 28th on the Korn Ferry Tour points list a year ago. In five starts so far this season, Walker’s best finish is a T-13 at the Mexico Open.
“It’s been a mix of things,” he said when asked what happened that allow him to reach the sport’s top level. “I think I’ve been slowly getting better for a long time. Part of it is just like I’ve gotten physically better, like with my trainer. I did some change coaches about a year ago too, trying to become a better driver of the ball. I feel like that was a little bit of my Achilles heel in the past, driving accuracy. And I just become a better putter. but I think all that stems from just kind of growing up a little bit and being more just being.”
While Walker was buoyed by the simple thrill of getting into the Players, the reality of his situation makes Friday’s second round a more dramatic test. He’s 125th on the FedEx Cup points list and very aware of the boost that could come if he were to make the cut and play his way into the weekend.
“There are a lot of points on the line,” he said, “so if you play well, it’s can be really valuable in that way.”
Thankfully, Walker can prepare for the task at hand. “It goes back more to normal, I guess,” he said. “I have a tee time, I can figure out how to prepare for it and try to play the best I can, like any other any other day.”
Walker expects there will be more people rooting for him on Friday, as family and friends didn’t have time to get to TPC Sawgrass on Thursday. Even so, one of the things he’ll take away from the experience of playing with Spieth and Clark was the reaction he received as the round rolled on.
“I thought it was kind of interesting,” he said. “All the cheers at the beginning were only for Wyndham or for Jordan, and then towards the end, I started hearing more for myself. It’s like a few people figured out who I was by the end.”
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
