Nick Dougherty feels TPC Sawgrass was set up too tough for the third round

Nick Dougherty reflects on a tough third day for the field at The Players Championship, and feels the set-up at TPC Sawgrass was a little unfair on the players.

You can see a different perspective to what's going on today. The guy that wins this is going to take home almost $2million, so people are saying that it should be hard, it should be tricky and frustrating.

But from the players' point of view, they're really not enjoying this. It is the "Players" Championship, and I think it's inevitable that the players will have something to say about this.

There are ways and means to make it hard, but the way they have chosen to make it so difficult today, with the tough pin positions and how they've let the course get so firm and fast, I don't think it will be well received.

It has 100 percent been a reaction to the low scores of the first two days. If scores are higher due to high winds, that's an act of nature and they can't do anything about that. But this has been a reaction to 15 under par leading at halfway.

It's known as the fifth major, so the scoring maybe should be in line with the actual majors to a degree, but 15 under par for two rounds isn't a major score, but we have seen that in the third round with the average round being over 76.

But I'm not sure the way it's happened has been entirely fair. We're seeing some guys hitting it stone dead, but if you don't land your ball on the right segment of the greens, you're struggling to make par.

We have seen some top quality players 30 feet from the pin, and they're finding it almost impossible to get their ball within six feet of the hole with their first putts.

Jason Day could hardly miss on the greens for two days and didn't drop a shot in 36 holes, but it was a different story for him on Saturday. He lipped out at the second and third, and his four-putt on the sixth was really hard to take.

But one of the things I like to see is the PGA Tour testing the resilience of the players, and Day was up to that test when he knocked it stone dead at seven just after his double at six. But then he skulled his bunker shot over the green at eight and took another double.

We've seen so many top-class players suffering on the greens, with many hitting putts as far past the hole as they were to start with. I'm not a fan of how they have set it up, but it will reward someone who can hang in there.

It takes the skill out of the equation to a degree, some players have been punished despite hitting good shots and I don't like to see that. But you can't argue with the excitement it has generated, and there are a handful of players who have still managed to put a score together.

It's golf on the edge. The course has been criticised in the past for being too short, with players hitting too many wedges into par-fours, so the problem for the organisers is that the only way they can defend Sawgrass is to dry the course out, turn the greens brown and put the pins in inaccessible places.

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I think they went a little too far with that today, and whoever was in charge of the course set-up is probably a little anxious about the way things have gone.