SENTRY TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS
Best bets
2pts each-way Collin Morikawa @ 12/1
2pts each-way Scottie Scheffler @ 5/1
1pt each-way Tom Kim @ 25/1
1pt each-way Jordan Spieth @ 25/1
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Welcome to Golf 2024 and what a roller-coaster of a ride it’s going to be with Tiger Woods, 48 last week but hopefully fit enough now to play on a monthly basis, coming to the rescue at the box office as the PGA Tour faces a year of crisis following Masters champion Jon Rahm signing for the Saudi-backed LIV breakaways.
More big names will surely follow as sponsors get more and more restless about not getting value for their buck and rightly so. The PGA Tour has had to pile bucketloads of money into a significantly weakened product just to keep within shouting distance of the bounteous gifts offered by LIV. It’s quite a circus and as the great Stephen Sondheim once wrote: “Send in the clowns … don’t bother, they’re here.”
The good news is that the four Majors will stand out from all the other mega-bucks tournaments because they are the only ones where great champions like Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Bryson De Chambeau, Cameron Smith and Dustin Johnson, LIV’s big five, will have the opportunity to take on what’s left of the PGA Tour elite, headed by Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy.
With Rahm moving over for a reported $500m, two of those Majors are now in LIV hands with the Spaniard defending his Masters crown in April and Koepka doing likewise with the PGA Championship the following month. What odds all four Majors falling into LIV hands in the near future, particularly if the superstars of tomorrow, Ludvig Aberg and Tom Kim, are tempted into jumping ship?
The new year tees off with a new name and new formula at Kapalua. What used to be the Sentry Tournament of Champions is now simply The Sentry, the first of eight Signature tournaments with limited all-star fields and massive purses. The champions of 2023, at least 35 of them, are joined by 24 out of the top 50 on last year’s FedEx Cup standings, making a field of 59 and a handsome payday for all with no cut and a prize fund bumped up from $15m to $20m.
The tournament was in the balance when the west of Maui was hit by fire with lives lost, homes destroyed and tourism badly affected. A third of the staff at Kapalua, which is in the north of the island, lost homes or possessions but, after a massive effort, it’s all systems go this week with the perennial venue in pristine shape for its showcase week.
The only par 73 on tour is a monster 7586-yard invitation to birdies and eagles, an ideal pipe-opener to the calendar year which, for the second year running, has been deprived of its defending champion, first Cammie Smith then Rahm defecting to LIV and consequently being suspended by the PGA Tour.
Also missing is Rory McIlroy, never a Kapalua man who is readying himself for DP World Tour action in Dubai for the next two weeks but we’ve still got 21 of the top 25 on the world rankings although the weather will be less idyllic than the setting with a turbulent Friday and Saturday in store and temperatures in the low 20s.
Despite its great length, the Plantation course at Kapalua does not preclude short hitters as Jim Furyk proved back in the day and Jordan Spieth (before he put on extra distance) emphasised in 2016 with an amazing 30-under-par display that saw him win by a whopping eight strokes. That total was improved upon two years ago by another not known as a bomber when Aussie putting wizard Smith posted 34 under to deprive a rampant Rahm.
It is a one-off set-up with easily the widest fairways on tour but paradoxically the most important club in the bag is the putter as 17 of the last 18 winners have been in the top four in that discipline that week. With its undulating fairways and plenty of run, Kapalua does not play its length and even the 663-yard downhill behemoth 18th is reachable in two by most.
My two against the field, Collin Morikawa and Scheffler, had their putting problems in mid-season last year but showed in their most recent performances they now have the flat stick as friend rather than enemy.
Fitzdares seem to want to keep Morikawa onside as they offer only 12/1 but I don’t blame them.
He was 24 under par and bogey free after 54 holes last year and looked home for all money taking a six-shot lead into the final round. But some early mistakes upset him and with Rahm shooting 11 under par for the last 17 holes in a 63, it all went pear-shaped for the disconsolate Californian.
Putting woes dogged much of Morikawa’s play in the big tournaments later in the year but it was encouraging to see him win the ZOZO Championship in the tour’s annual visit to Japan in October. That followed his sixth at the Tour Championship – and he would have finished higher than seventh in his final outing, the Hero World Challenge, but for incurring a two-shot penalty on a rules technicality.
It’s hard not to back someone who is 70 under par for his last 12 rounds at Kapalua as Morikawa is and I make him a stonking each-way bet to get us off to happy new year.
So all’s well again with him, while Scheffler called on English putting guru Phil Kenyon to sort out his problems and he looked different gravy to the rest of an elite Hero field when back to his sensational best in the Bahamas last month. Despite putter blips, his record was phenomenally solid. Only seventh and 13th on previous visits, this could be third time lucky for America’s best golfer.
Despite the absence of Rahm and McIlroy, Europe’s winning Ryder Cup team is strongly represented. Viktor Hovland finished the year like a future world No. 1 but there’s no evidence the course suits him, Aberg is everyone’s idea of a future world No. 1 but is priced accordingly and first-timers have a poor record, while Tyrrell Hatton, Matt Fitzpatrick, Tommy Fleetwood, Sepp Straka and Justin Rose all have decent place chances.
Preference though is for Tom Kim, Max Homa and course winner Spieth. Kim’s fifth last year was a fine debut, his lack of length surprisingly being no deterrent. Homa was a shot ahead of him in T3 and was almost a lone star for the USA in the Ryder Cup.
With Spieth you never quite know what you are going to get but that’s built into his price of 25/1 and given his strong course record he is well worth risking.
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