PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. -- Just down the road a piece, there's a large and fancy edifice filled with bronze busts of the most famous names in the sport.
It's a repository of the best and brightest.
Not to mention bravest, Sean O'Hair points out.
The way O'Hair sees it, no player is going to be enshrined in the World Golf Hall of Fame for incessantly laying up, playing it overly safe and otherwise trying to protect a runner-up finish as the pressure mounts Sunday afternoons.
"I mean, I think there are guys who are out here just to make a good living, and I respect that," O'Hair said. "Hey, to each his own, you know? For me, one day I want to sit back and see my name in the Hall of Fame.
"That takes extraordinary golf. Playing for money isn't going to get you that."
He ought to know, on both fronts.
In one of the most infamous endings in Players Championship history, O'Hair last year stepped onto the fateful 17th tee trailing eventual winner and playing partner Phil Mickelson by two shots. Two swings later, he'd made a quadruple-bogey seven, sending two balls into the lake surrounding the quirky island green.
He plummeted into 11th and lost more than $700,000 as a result of those two, admittedly aggressive swipes. O'Hair twice went right at the flagstick and paid a huge price, if dollar signs are what motivates you. He still has his eye on bigger quarry -- in this case, the Players winner's trophy that Wednesday was situated a few feet away.
"I would have given the whole first-place check to win that," he said, gesturing toward the crystal trophy. "Just to have my name on that, I would have given that $1.5 million check to whoever it is."
After battling the vastly more experienced Mickelson all day, O'Hair's splash-and-burn on the 17th was hard to watch. In fact, nobody was quite sure what to say to O'Hair in the aftermath. He'd gone down swinging, but the double-drowning on the controversial hole seemed a delicate subject to broach, which he found somewhat humorous. Guys on the tour lose nearly every time out, after all.
"I found it so funny that I had friends come up to me and I had media come up to me, 'How do you feel about 17?'" he laughed Wednesday. "You lose golf tournaments every week."
Not when you are as talented as this particular 25-year-old, who already has two career victories to his credit, tying him for the most by an American under age 30. He won the PODS Championship in mid-March, outlasting veteran Stewart Cink by applying some of the same principles he learned in losing at Sawgrass last year.
If there was one thing O'Hair said he might have done differently on his Waterloo hole last year at Sawgrass, it's that he could have used a less-lofted club and aimed a few feet away from the flag. Instead, knowing he had to make up two shots in as many holes, he aggressively bombed a 9-iron right over the flag and into the drink.
"I think it helped me win this year's PODS to be honest with you," he said. "I wasn't paying too much attention to what Stewart was doing, but there were a lot of times where I could have gotten too aggressive on some shots coming in.
"I was playing the proper shots, I was hitting to the proper targets, and I was just parring the golf course to death and letting everybody else make the mistakes. And sometimes that's what it takes to win a championship."
So, if O'Hair has the chance to win it again this week, you can bet he won't be shying away from the challenge, even if he shies away from a few flagsticks and picks his spots a bit more cautiously, compared to last year. He's learning how to be passive-aggressive, if you will, and still contend for wins.
You can accomplish both and still play for first, after all.
"It's more about winning a golf tournament," he said. "I've never seen a great player play for money."
Even a year later, after O'Hair had successfully toured the 17th again in his practice rounds, everybody wanted to get his take on the hole. He has no issues with it, really.
There's no scar tissue, he promised. In fact, it's just the opposite.
"It's one of those things that's almost a steppingstone instead of something that drags you down."