Golf's biggest stars do not like to be made fools of - and now it has happened twice in under a year.

Fifty-four balls in one lake on one hole in one day might be great for those watching, but not for those competing at golf's richest event.

Fred Funk may have been a happy man after becoming, at 48, easily the oldest winner of the Players Championship, but many of his rivals were not wearing smiles as they left Sawgrass.

Four-letter words were everywhere, not just in the name of the new champion.

The carnage at the 137-yard 17th came only nine months after the farcical closing round of the United States Open, where the greens were allowed to become a ridiculous speed and some two-foot putts, if they missed the hole, were rolling 50 feet away.

This time the problem was getting on the island green in the first place. Not easy on a calm day, hellishly difficult in a 35mph crosswind.

It has always been a controversial hole. The course might be called Sawgrass, but standing on the tee virtually all you can see is water.

A total of 84 world-class players stood on that tee on Monday for the third and fourth rounds of what is called golf's unofficial fifth major - there were two rounds in one day because of earlier rain delays - and a staggering 37 of them put at least one ball in the drink.

Tiger Woods got away lightly by losing only one, but he was not in contention anyway. Phil Mickelson was probably not going to win either when he did it twice for a quadruple bogey seven in the morning and certainly not when he dumped another in later.

But the hole did end the hopes of Zach Johnson, who also did it in both rounds and finished four shots behind Funk in eighth place, and Lee Westwood was lying seventh when he matched Mickelson's seven before lunch.

Nobody, though, suffered like Bob Tway. In the space of a few minutes he crashed from 10th to 72nd with a tournament-record 12, needing no fewer than five attempts to find dry land - and then three-putting.

''I didn't think anybody would break my record - 11 is a pretty big number,'' said previous holder Robert Gamez.

Tway somehow managed to keep the expletives out of his answer when he was spoken to about the experience.

''You're playing great in the tournament and all of a sudden, in one hole, you might as well be finishing last,'' commented the US PGA champion, who could be suffering nightmares for months.

He had bogeyed the hole in the first round and twice found the water for a triple bogey six in the second, making him 13 over par there and seven under for the other 17.

Mickelson still considers the hole fair, but did add: ''It requires an element of luck to have the wind right.''

Woods just wishes it was somewhere else on the course rather than so close to the finish.

''I don't think a hole like that should decide a tournament - a good shot may not be on land,'' he commented.

Funk saw Tway take his 12. ''It was hard to watch,'' he said. ''You hate to be working so hard and have that one hole ruin your week. If you hit it in the water the first time there's no guarantee you're going to hit the green from the drop area.''

None of the 54 balls in the lake belonged to Funk, or to runners-up Luke Donald, Tom Lehman or Scott Verplank.

Ranked 181st on the US Tour in distance, but first in accuracy, Funk grabbed the £774,193 first prize with a nine-under-par total of 279.

A closing 71 was good enough to give him the biggest win of his life, only his seventh in 523 events, because third-round leader Donald managed only a 76.

The 27-year-old from High Wycombe was trying to become the first European winner of the title since Sandy Lyle in 1987. But in the last 14 years Nick Faldo, Bernhard Langer (twice), Colin Montgomerie, Padraig Harrington (twice) and now him have all been runners-up.

Donald, now up to 16th in the world just ahead of Darren Clarke, is playing in this week's BellSouth Classic in Atlanta.