The Players will answer a lot of questions

There will be numerous storylines to consider when play begins today in the 37th edition of The Players Championship at the TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., and all of them are juicy.

Early on the focus will be on Tiger Woods to see if he can bounce back from missing the cut last week. Woods' missed cut at Quail Hollow came by eight strokes, the widest margin of his career. The previous worst was three, at the 2005 Disney tournament and 2006 U.S. Open.

In practice rounds earlier this week, Woods still appeared to be struggling to find his past form and that might not bode well. The TPC Sawgrass has never been one of his favorite courses and chances are good that he'll struggle if he can't get his game under control because architect Pete Dye's course design ruthlessly punishes imprecision. Since winning The Players Championship in 2001, Woods has played the Stadium course six times and only finished in the top 10 once, an eighth-place finish last year.

Much attention also will be paid to Phil Mickelson, who can bump Woods from the No. 1 spot in the world golf rankings with a victory and an-outside-the-top-five finish by Tiger. Mickelson has momentum on his side coming off his Masters victory and a second-place finish last week. But he wasn't ready to make any predictions during a pre-tournament news conference.

"It's every player's goal and intent to strive to be recognized as the No. 1 player in the world relative to the rankings," Mickelson said. "It's certainly something that I have been striving for but have not achieved yet. And so it would mean a lot to me.

"But for me to accomplish that, I can't focus on that. I've got to go out and get ready to play this golf course because it's not an easy challenge, and for me to have a chance to achieve No. 1, I've got to win. So I've got a lot of work ahead."

Besides Woods and Mickelson, the golf world will be closely watching Rory McIlroy, the freshest face on the PGA Tour. After barely making the cut last week, the just-turned 21-year-old from Northern Ireland finished with rounds of 66 and 62 to win the Quail Hollow Championship by four shots. Was his amazing performance down the stretch a fluke or a turning point in his career? Only time will tell. Before winning at Quail Hollow, McIlroy had just endured two missed cuts in Houston and at the Masters.

Defending champion Henrik Stenson will be trying to jump-start his season this week against a field that includes 40 of the top-50 ranked players in the world. Stenson shot a final-round 66 on baked-out greens last year to beat Ian Poulter by four shots. Of the 10 top-50 missing this year, Steve Stricker, Anthony Kim and Retief Goosen are hurt. Edoardo Molinari, Miguel A. Jimenez, Ryo Ishikawa, Yuta Ikeda, Louis Oosthuizen, Michael Sim and Soren Hanson have simply elected not to play.

One of the biggest oddities of The Players Championship is the fact that nobody has ever repeated as champion. Five players have won this event multiple times. Jack Nicklaus is the only three-time winner (1974, 1976, 1978). Two-time winners include Steve Elkington (1991, 1997), Hal Sutton (1983, 2000), Fred Couples (1984, 1996) and Davis Love (1992, 2003).

The tournament will be telecast by the Golf Channel (today: 1 p.m.-7 p.m.; Friday: 9 p.m.-12 a.m.) and NBC (Saturday: 2 p.m.-7 p.m.; Sunday: 2 p.m.-7 p.m.).

Information from PGATOUR.com, ESPN.com and GolfObserver.com contributed to this post.