PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — When it was announced last year that the Players Championship was being moved to May, one of the big benefits was supposed to be better weather.

Gone would be the frequent rain delays that plagued the so-called fifth major during March, along with the occasional chilly mornings in northeast Florida.

Naturally, it rained off and on here on Wednesday and the forecast for today's first round and the rest of the week is, well, more of the same.

"Welcome to sunny, dry, warm Florida," PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem deadpanned.

Umbrellas aside, Finchem is not about to let a little lousy weather — technically, subtropical storm Andrea — rain on his parade. He and the tour have worked too long and hard for that.

Since the 2006 Players Championship — now referred to simply as "The Players" in most promotional material and logos — everything has changed and, in some ways, nothing has.

Aside from the later date, which repositioned the Players from two weeks before the Masters to plug a big-tournament gap between the Masters in April and the U.S. Open in June, there are the $50 million in improvements.

Most readily visible is the $30 million, 77,000-square-foot clubhouse

On the golf course — already one of the most demanding on the PGA Tour — they dropped an additional $20 million.

Most of those changes probably won't be noticed on TV: a tee moved, a few trees planted, a green re-sloped. The real changes are subterranean, designed to improve playing conditions.

Because the TPC Sawgrass was built on a swamp in 1980, the ground beneath it gurgled with trouble, especially when it rained. For drainage purposes, what they did over the winter was essentially dig up the entire course — every tee, fairway and green — to remove tons of "sludge" and lay down a one-foot-thick layer of sand.

They also installed one of those SubAir systems that is used at Augusta National, an elaborate network of tunnels beneath the course that enables them to vacuum out water and circulate air.

The Players gets additional benefits from the later date. For starters, now that it is played during daylight-saving time, there won't be as much of a mad rush to finish early, before dark.