The PGA Tour announced Wednesday that the 2026 season opener, the Sentry, has been canceled.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t only The announcement related to Kapalua on Wednesday. The Plantation course — the pride of Maui and longtime host to the first event of the Tour’s calendar season — added a banner to its website trumpeting the fact that it is now booking group times after the course closes for two months.
So what on earth is going on?
This is a story of drought, of course, of Hawaii’s conditions and politics. But it’s also become a story about the future of the PGA Tour, about its vision and strategy and its relationship with markets and sponsors. Let’s talk about some of the complicating factors together, question-and-answer style.
Wait – why don’t they have Sentry in Kapalua like usual?
The simplest answer is that Maui’s water restrictions (resulting from a combination of drought, infrastructure, creeks, canals, lawsuits, fingerlings and more) call into question the course’s readiness to host a major field in January. Tournament officials and PGA Tour representatives discussed and ultimately decided last month that the Sentry would not happen as planned.
An earlier announcement on the decision cited conditioning concerns and explained that they pulled the plug early due to the “unique logistical complexities of hosting a tour on the island of Maui.”
“These include shipping deadlines, coordinating vendors and building the tour’s infrastructure — all of which are intensified by the island’s remote location,” Tour has written.
So how bad is the course, really?
Honestly? If you’ve seen embarrassing social media posts, it’s probably not as bad as you think. There are two courses at Kapalua, Plantation and Bay, and the resort has redoubled its efforts to revitalize Plantation — while some of the most viral images, like this one below, have been of the sepia-toned bay.
What about the Plantation Course? They have a live view of the first tee that you can watch hereand below is a screenshot from Wednesday afternoon ET.
A screenshot Wednesday from Kapalua’s live cam.
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This is hardly proof of anything; we don’t have a close look at how well the grass has grown on the greens, for example. But we still have two more months until the start of the tournament. If everyone involved had been committed to the idea that Sentry MUST to play in Kapalua this year, it looks like they might have done it. One way to think about it is that the Tour doesn’t like uncertainty. The combination of complex local politics with the uncertainty of course conditions and all that is required to get equipment, sales and staff to Maui contributed to the plug being pulled.
Wait, so why not have it somewhere else?
Good question! There was talk of keeping the Sentry elsewhere. Torrey Pines, which served as a fill-in host for last year’s Genesis, was a possibility, as were other options, from Palm Springs, Florida. Ultimately, those in charge decided that the logistical challenges of putting together a last-minute replacement site weren’t worth it. That’s not a particularly satisfying answer, but another way to think about it is this: Tour and this tour are each in reset mode. It wasn’t worth pulling out all the stops to make Sentry happen in a less than satisfying way.
There was also this comment from Stephanie Smith of Sentry on the release:
“Sentry is a jewel on the PGA Tour schedule,” said Smith, Sentry’s chief marketing and brand officer and chief golf partnership. “We were determined to find a way to play a signature-level event in 2026 – one that honored the tradition of the tour and delivered the quality of competition that players and fans have come to expect. Despite the tour’s best efforts, it became impossible to do so. Sentry is committed to our long-term relationship with the Tour – which runs through 2035 – and the Sentry Event would be a place of important as 2020. have liked, we are optimistic about the future.”
Are there other complicating factors?
There is! One is the fact that the Sentry is no longer the only early January tournament on the golf calendar. The DP World Tour’s 2026 Dubai Invitational is scheduled for the week after Sentry (January 15-18) and has already received commitments from Rory McIlroy and Tommy Fleetwood; they are also among the top Europeans expected at next week’s Hero Dubai Desert Classic (January 22-25).
There’s also TGL, which kicks off in Florida on Sunday, December 28, and then features matches on either Monday or Tuesday each week in January — which raised eyebrows when the schedule was released, given that it’s hard to combine a Tuesday TGL match with a Thursday tournament in Hawaii.
So … where does the PGA Tour season begin?
Technically, the first PGA Tour event of the season will be the Sony Open in Hawaii, with balls in the air for the first round on January 15. But it may not be felt enough as the full PGA Tour will be underway; the top pros who usually cross the island from Sentry to Sony may not make the trip at all.
It will be interesting to see if we have an improved field when the tour returns to the mainland with American Express in Palm Springs January 22-25. This is followed by the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines (Jan. 29-Feb. 1) and the WM Phoenix Open (Feb. 5-8) before, finally, the first Signature Event, the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am (Feb. 12-15). From there, things will hit warp speed (eight Signing Events plus Players and all four major teams over the next 23 weeks). But it’s definitely a slower start with Sentry overtime.
Does this mean the end of PGA Tour golf in Hawaii?
The answer there is very definitive maybe. No final decisions have been made about Sentry’s future, nor has Sony, but the Tour appears to be evaluating all of its options — and has been clear about the built-in challenges that come with hosting pro events in Hawaii.
On the one hand, there is a long tradition of early season tournament golf in Hawaii. Cold weather golf fans love to be transported to the epic Hawaiian hills of Kapalua to check out the first week of the year. Players who make the trip want to start their seasons there and want to bring their families. And Sentry recently extended its partnership with the Tour and that inaugural event through 2035.
On the other hand, having a massive golf tournament on a remote island chain is expensive. It’s a logistical challenge from both tour operations and TV production perspectives. And Hawaii doesn’t have the population centers of its mainland counterparts, making generating revenue more difficult. Reading between the lines of the tournament statementsounds committed to her relationship with Sentry (“an incredible partner of ours”) but avoided any mention of the future of the Kapalua tour. Add the fact that Sony’s deal expires in 2026, combine that with the Tour’s new leadership, and it’s easy to imagine a world where the season starts somewhere else — and somewhere easier to get to.
What does this mean for the future of the PGA Tour?
Nothing, yet. But it’s a reminder that change is coming. That everything is being evaluated. That Future Competition Committeeled by Tiger Woods, is charged with creating the Tour’s “optimal competitive model.” As new PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp said in August:
“The goal is not incremental change. The goal is meaningful change.”
That committee also includes tour pros Patrick Cantlay, Adam Scott, Camilo Villegas, Maverick McNealy and Keith Mitchell — as well as former Valero CEO Joe Gorder, Fenway Sports Group’s John Henry and baseball executive turned sports visionary Theo Epstein. They will have more to say as time goes on.
Right now all we know for sure is that the first Tour event of 2026 is off schedule. We can only guess what changes come next.
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