Carnage at The Players as Min Woo Lee and Akshay Bhatia are forced to play off the driving range

Min Woo Lee and Akshay Bhatia were forced to take a drop on the Sawgrass driving range as the third round of the Players Championship descended into chaos.

The two overnight leaders had spent nearly 20 minutes on the fifth hole – looking for their balls, traipsing in the bushes and liaising with officials – before they finally hit their approaches towards the green.

At that point, the final pairing had both sent their drives into the trees and both had opted to take an unplayable drop.

Lee and Bhatia headed nearly 70 yards further away from the hole – to the other side of the tree line – in order to give themselves a shot at the green.

That saw them wander on to the back of the practice area. From there, they hit a blind shot towards the green from more than 250 yards out.

Aerial television cameras were forced to fly high into the sky to show their long route from the practice area to the hole.

On a blustery day in Florida, neither player could manage better than double bogey on the par four. That knocked Lee off the top of the leaderboard – he had held the joint-lead before carding a six.

For Bhatia, meanwhile, it capped a calamitous start to the third round at TPC Sawgrass. The left hander, a protege of Phil Mickleson, birdied the opening hole to move to 12-under-par.

Unfortunately, Bhatia then dropped four shots over the next four holes. 

Both players had already taken the scenic route round the early holes of Sawgrass – between them they hit just one fairway out of eight over the first five holes.

Lee then followed up his double bogey with another wayward drive that found the trees – and another dropped shot.