The Sentry

THE SENTRY

After its brief sabbatical the PGA tour returns to our screens this week with its traditional year opening curtain raiser in Hawaii, The Sentry.

As has been the case for many years now this event marks the first of a two week stint in Hawaii as next week will see the first full field event of 2024, The Sony Open in Honolulu.

The Sentry was actually founded way back in 1953 and over the early years was played in Nevada and then California, before relocating to its current venue, The Plantation Course at Kapalua in Maui in 1999 and it has remained here ever since.

Current title sponsor Sentry Insurance took over these duties in 2018.

This year though the event has undergone an overhaul in relation to eligibility status as not only is it open to all winners on tour from the previous calendar year but invites have now been extended to all players who finished in the all important top 50 on the PGA Tour last season. As a result the event has been renamed from the Sentry ToC simply to The Sentry!

Allowing for this change we have a field of 59 players teeing it up this week made up of 35 winners from 2024 and 24 players who finished in the top 50 without posting a win. Beneficiaries on the latter front include Ben An, Eric Cole, Cam Davis, Harris English, Tommy Fleetwood, Tyrrell Hatton, Hideki Matsuyama, Patrick Rodgers and Cameron Young.

Two players who will not be in Maui though are Rory McIlroy who is once more choosing to start his year in Dubai and defending champion Jon Rahm who of course has now chosen to ply his trade on the LIV circuit.
The market is headed up clearly by Scottie Scheffler with Viktor Hovland then following as the only other player available at single digits. This pair are then followed by Collin Morikawa, Max Homa, Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele.

COURSE

As noted above the event has been played since 1999 on the Plantation Course at the Kapalua resort in Maui.

The Plantation Course was co designed by Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coore and features wide undulating fairways and larger than average undulating Bermuda Greens.

The course measures just under 7600yds long.

The greens are TifEagle Bermuda

The course is unique on the PGA Tour in that it plays to a Par 73 as there are only three par three’s to go with 11 par fours and four par fives. Allowing for its length you would be forgiven for thinking it would favour bombers, however plenty of average to shorter length hitters have performed well here over the years such as Stricker, Spieth, Reed and Zach Johnson.

Bigger hitters have certainly had their share of success here over the years as well though with Dustin Johnson posting a 430 yard drive along the way to his win in 2018.

During 2019 the course underwent a major redesign/renovation project under the supervision of the original designers Coore & Crenshaw, which we saw in play in the 2020 edition.

The main aim of this was to firm up the greens and the course in general thus returning it to playing how it was originally designed.

In addition some holes saw bunkers repositioned in order to have more impact on the modern day players.

Finally some holes were lengthened and some shortened to fit more in line with how the ‘Trade Winds’, which effect the course tend to blow.

I noted in 2021 that with the wind playing a fairly significant part in the 2020 edition we had to be a little cautious as to how much impact the course changes had in bringing us a winning score ten shots higher than the previous year and this indeed turned out to be the case as the 2021 edition saw normal scoring service resumed with Harris English triumphing with a 25- under total. Well in 2022 with conditions again co-operating we saw the course taken apart with Cameron Smith pipping Jon Rahm with a 34- under total!

HISTORY

Perhaps not unsurprisingly for a tournament who’s field, until recently, has been made up purely from winners from the previous year, over recent years the Sentry ToC has very much become the domain of players from the very top of the game.

This can be seen from the fact that only two of the last 11 winners, Harris English and Xander Schauffele, were either not already, or have not subsequently become major champions.

An even more striking stat that hit me when looking at the event is the number of starts players had previously made in Kapalua before first tasting victory here.

Let me expand further…. You would think that in an event, which historically is purely open to winners from the previous year and therefore which inevitably includes a bunch of first time winners making their debut here, we would have had some winners over the recent years who were making their first start in the event having posted their first PGA Tour win the previous year.

This though is not the case at all, in fact if we look at the list below showing the past ten winners and how many previous wins they had on the PGA Tour, we can see experience appears to be key.

2023 – Jon Rahm – 7 previous wins
2022 – Cameron Smith – 3 previous wins
2021 – Harris English – 2 previous wins
2020 – Justin Thomas – 11 previous wins
2019 – X Schauffele – 3 previous PGA wins
2018 - D Johnson - 16 previous PGA wins
2017 - J Thomas – 2 previous PGA wins
2016 - J Spieth – 6 previous PGA wins
2015 - P Reed – 3 previous PGA wins
2014 - Z Johnson – 10 previous PGA wins
2013 - D Johnson – 6 previous PGA wins

As we can see from this table only three players in the past ten years, English, Schauffele and Thomas, have won here on their second visit, whilst all of the others had made multiple starts on Maui before getting the job done, with the most recent winner Rahm triumphing on his sixth start here.

There are two possible reasons for this, first and foremost it could just be a case that course experience, getting to know the large undulating greens here, how the Trade Winds can effect shots etc, is key.

Secondly I do think that it is quite possible when a player tees it up here for the first time they don’t necessarily have their full ‘game head’ on and instead get caught up in the whole ‘I’ve made it to Maui, let’s bring the family for a vacation’ vibe, thus forgetting there is an event to be won.

Either way, whatever the reason, it seems clear that historically this has not been an event for first timers.
It is also worth noting that one of those three winners who have triumphed on their second visit, Harris English in 2022, had not won in the previous season and was eligible based on his top thirty Fedex Cup finish. From that point of view he was not arriving in Maui with the ‘first time winners’ mindset as noted above but rather with a hunger to post his first win since 2013 on the back of a really solid 2020. With motivation then potentially more of a driver to the ‘non winners’ from the previous year it is perhaps worth looking closely at the players with previous course experience, who are teeing it up this week despite having not won in 2023.

Finally in a continuation of the ‘experience counts here’ mantra by my reckoning only four first time players here have posted a top five finish in the past seven years, Sungjae Im in 2021, Jon Rahm in 2018 and Tom Hoge and Tom Kim last year.

WEATHER FORECAST

It looks like we are in for a reasonably fine start weather wise to 2023 on the PGA Tour with temperatures hovering around the low 80s and not much sign of rain in the forecast for the week.

The wind, which is more often than not a factor here doesn’t look to be much of a factor this week with nothing much more than 10mph in the forecast as I write. Conditions should then be comparable to similar scoring to what we saw last year.

As I always so though, this could all change!

PICKS

There is always a fair bit of speculation involved for this first event of the New Year as you can never be quite sure as to how prepared the field will be. Who will come ready to win and who will have spent the festive period with their feet up reflecting on their achievements?

Having weighed everything up I have decided to go with four players this week as follows;

COLLIN MORIKAWA – 14/1 – 2.5pts E/W - 1/4 odds 1st 5 - FINISHED T5th

Call me a glutton for punishment but I am going to start my 2024 selections by going back to the player who caused us so much heartache here last year, Collin Morikawa.

I sided with Collin here last year for three main reasons, one that he had shown a liking for the track on his three previous visits, two that his form had started to pick up towards the end of 2021 and three his motivation levels based on 2021 being a winless year. Well, for the first three days the American was flawless posting rounds of 64, 66 & 65 and with a six shot lead at the turn on Sunday it looked like a stroll to victory. What happened then though of course was a very tough watch for Morikawa backers as out of nowhere he started to fritter shots and in doing so he gifted the trophy to a grateful Jon Rahm.

A hugely frustrating end to the week then no doubt, however if you add the second place finish to his two seventh’s and a fifth on his three previous visits and the effort rubber stamped what we already knew, which is the Plantation Course suits the two time Major Champion.

To his credit Morikawa followed that disappointment with a third place at the Farmers and a sixth at Riviera, however after that he lost his way through the bulk of the year with only one top ten, which came at the Masters, to his name, before he bounced back to form at the Rocket Mortgage when he losing out to Rickie Fowler in a play off.

Building on this effort Morikawa then pushed on by finally returning to the winners enclosure at the ZOZO Championship in the Fall before wrapping up his year with a sixth place at Tiger’s event in the Bahamas.

Returning then to the scene of last year’s meltdown would for any player probably be motivation enough to turn in another big performance here, however we can add to that Morikawa’s well documented ties to Maui through his family heritage with his Grand Parents having owned a restaurant there, meaning he is always keen to perform well in Hawaii so I would expect him to be sharp.

Furthermore following the tragic events of last summers wildfires, which hit the area so badly Morikawa with his connections has stepped forward financially to support the recovery process and I would expect this to add to his motivation this week.

With an Open Championship on his resume and a victory at another wide open venue with a links type feel to it, Concession, as well as obviously his form here, it is clear Morikawa relishes this kind of test and in a week where there is obviously an element of speculation as to who will be ‘game sharp’ I will take him to hit the ground running once more here in 2024.

TOM KIM – 28/1 – 1.5pts E/W - 1/4 odds 1st 5 - FINISHED 45th 

Next up this week for me is Tom Kim.

I mentioned earlier that only four players over the past seven years have hit the top five here on debut and with one of those being Tom last year that immediately puts him on my radar for this week.

Looking at Kim’s stats for his fifth place finish here last year and he ranked third in approach play and fifth around the greens, however like many debutants do he struggled here on the greens ranking 26th on that front. The hope then would be that with last years experience under his belt any improvement on the dance floor this year, allied to his trademark iron play will see Tom right in the hunt.

Looking at the 21yr old’s form in 2023 and after a quieter spring he bounced back to life with a sixth place at the Scottish Open and then a second at the Open Championship in July and of course if you then add that to his third place at the Scottish Open in 2022 and it is clear he is comfortable on wind effected coastal tracks.
What made Tom’s effort at the Open all the more remarkable was the fact that he achieved it with an ankle tear he sustained following slipping in the yard of his rental house and as a result he had to withdrew from the defence of his Wyndham title the following week.

Returning then for the playoff’s Tom was solid but unspectacular through these events, however he hit the jackpot a few weeks later when defended his trophy successfully at the Shriners before rounding out his year with a 15th place finish at the DP World Tour Championship.

If we look at that defence of his trophy at the Shriners and add in his sixth at the Scottish Open last year and one thing that strikes me is that when able to return to the scene of his two best finishes from 2022, aside from the Wyndham where he could not defend, he posted two great results and this tells me that once Tom takes a liking to a track he plays well there again and therefore his fifth on debut here jumps out even more.

On that basis then coupled with his liking of coastal venues I’m keen to have Kim onside this week.

CAMERON DAVIS – 66/1 - 1pt E/W - 1/5 odds 1st 6 - FINISHED 52nd

Next up I will take a chance on a player who returns here for the second time, Cameron Davis.

I took a risk on Davis here as a debutant back in 2022 as despite the poor overall record of first timers here I had a hunch the Aussie would be suited by the track and although he didn’t reward us his tenth place finish certainly justified that thought.

Longer than average but inaccurate off the tee Davis has the perfect long game to thrive here and if you add that to his strong par five performance over the years and ability to go low he really should thrive here.

Now embarking on his sixth full season on the PGA Tour the last couple of seasons have seen Cam develop more consistency, something which he was lacking in his early years. As a result despite not posting a win last season he earnt his place here with a 48th place finish in the Fedex Standings.

Where Davis really comes to the fore though is by the coast. To expand further and over the past four years on the PGA Tour when the sea is visible and the wind is in play. In fact in 19 coastal starts since the beginning of 2020 he has only missed four cuts, twice at the RSM Classic and at the Honda and Scottish Open last year. Furthermore in that time he has posted, two top seven finishes at the Heritage, a top ten in Hawaii at the Sony Open when the wind was really a factor, and an eye catching eighth place at the Honda Classic at PGA National and of course a tenth here.

Another thing Davis has going for him this week is of course his nationality in that Australians have a tremendous record here with Geoff Ogilvy winning twice here and Stuart Appleby posting three consecutive wins here from 2004.

The fact that Aussie’s have fared well here over the years is probably down to two things, firstly that they would often arrive ‘game sharp’ from their summer season and secondly that they are renowned to be great wind players and as a former Australian Open Champion brought up in Sydney, Davis certainly ticks that latter box.

Finally since being on tour it is noticeable that Cameron’s best efforts tend to come in low scoring events, where his aggressive play and ability to make birdies in bunches come to the fore.

Cameron arrives here after a really solid back end of 2023, which saw him notch top seven finishes at the Fortinet and the Shriners, a 12th at the ZOZO, as well as a seventh on home soil in the Australian PGA and I expect him to hit the ground running for 2024 this week.

LUKE LIST – 90/1 - 1pt E/W - 1/5 odds 1st 6 - FINISHED 22nd

Finally this week I will roll the dice on a player who when on song is not afraid to mix it in big company, Luke List.
For many years List was a player who flattered to deceive and was unable to get over the line to bag a maiden tour title. All this changed though in 2022 when he produced a superb performance to bag the trophy at The Farmers, a win, which as well as finally getting the ‘monkey off his back’ with regards to hoisting a trophy, also gives us a nice piece of coastal form, which links well here through last year’s Sentry champion Rahm.

Following that win Luke really struggled to push on failing to post another single top 15 finish bar an 11th place finish here on debut in 2023, until he popped up out of the blue with his second tour win at the Sanderson’s last Fall.

List then played solidly for his remaining four starts of 2023, which brings us back to Maui for his second visit here.
Returning then to his 11th place last year and Luke ranked third off the tee for the week and 10th in Approach Play, however the putter, which we know is his nemesis let him down as he ranked 29th on this front. Clearly though from that effort, which came on the back of some really poor form from List at the back of 2022 shows his big hitting game is suited to Kapalua.

As well as posting that win at Torrey Pines Luke is a former runner up by the coast at the Honda, while he also has two top tens at the RSM and a top ten at the Corales to his name over recent years, thus showing further affinity for seaside golf. I’ll take a chance then that arriving in Maui on the back of a far stronger Fall than this time last year, Luke can push on from his debut effort in the event and get in to the hunt for us at big odds.