Much has been made of the fact that this year’s Sony Open could be the PGA Tour’s final venture in Hawaii. (For a while, at least.) The financial numbers don’t exactly add up for the savvy planners, no matter how you hold them up to that glorious Hawaiian sunlight. But if there’s a quintessential way to sum up the Hawaiian experience on Tour, this tournament does it best.
All About Saturday explains what’s great and lame about Pacific Island Pro Golf on this particular weekend in mid-January. Ultimately, we have a second-tier field – with all due respect to everyone involved – with some top professionals, most of whom have played well at this tournament before. And despite top 10 players like Russell Henley, JJ Spaun and Bob MacIntyre all showing their faces, the likes of Collin Morikawa, Keegan Bradley and Tony Finau all left before the weekend started.
What’s to blame for that? Not Hawaii, necessarily. We’ll call it what it is: their first event of the year. Their first real competitive shots in months. Like the Dubai Invitational, played 8,500 miles away, the Sony feels like preseason golf, certainly not far from offseason golf in the fall. Only Ryan Gerard – the man who crossed the Atlantic in December in search of a Masters invitation – could claim his 2025 season continued without interruption here in Hawaii. Everyone else has gotten back into shape.
And yet that doesn’t mean golf wasn’t compelling, as long as you steered clear of the NFL’s divisional round playoff games.
Even as players made their sweaty laps out of Wai’alae Country Club early in the mid-1960s, Friday evening and Saturday afternoon brought some ripping winds through Honolulu, making the classic Tour course a real test. The temperature was certainly in the upper 70s, but the wind was blowing between 50 and 55 mph, with plenty of crosswinds approaching the Wai’alae greens.
“Honestly, I feel like I played better yesterday, but today I scored better,” Chris Gotterup said with some confusion on his face. His 2-under 68 puts him two behind Davis Riley’s 12-under lead. Gotterup was just one of several players who mentioned how the wind can play funny tricks on your mind, even when you’re just putting.
Saturday’s average score was just above par, something we are not used to seeing on a track that pros normally dismantle. If Sunday’s winner finishes at 15 under or worse, it will be the highest winning score since 2020. Perhaps this is the island’s way of saying one of two things: Tidy and tidy! Or Maybe you should all stay a little longer.
And yet no Tour event will face the same headwind as the Sony on Sunday. As we’ve learned for decades, the NFL rules every television entity in America, sports division or otherwise, and has a few more divisional round games that will crush any ounce of fascinating golf the Sony could offer. If the tournament is lucky, the snowy match in Chicago will end in a blowout, causing golf’s toughest fans to turn around for the final few holes on sun-drenched O’ahu.
In that sense, Hawaii’s loss will be California’s gain. We may continue to repeat this phrase for many more January months to come.
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