Much has been made of this year’s Sony Open potentially being the PGA Tour’s last venture to Hawaii. (At least for a while.) Finances aren’t exactly good for savvy schedulers, no matter how you keep them in the gorgeous Hawaiian sunshine. But if there was one quintessential way to sum up the Tour’s Hawaiian experience, well, this tour is doing it best.
Everything About Saturday explains what’s great and innocent about Pacific Island pro golf on this special mid-January weekend. After all, we have a second-rate field – with all due respect to all involved – with a large number of professionals, most of whom have played well in this tournament before. And despite top 10 players like Russell Henley and JJ Spaun and Bob MacIntyre showing up, players like Collin Morikawa and Keegan Bradley and Tony Finau all left before the weekend started.
What’s wrong with that? Not Hawaii, necessarily. We’ll call it what it is: their first event of the year. Their first real competitive shots in months. Much like her Invitation to Dubaiplayed 8,500 miles away, Sony it feels like preseason golf, certainly not too far from fall offseason golf. Only Ryan Gerard – the man who ran across the Atlantic in December in pursuit of a Masters invite — can claim his 2025 season continued without a break here in Hawaii. Everyone else is back in shape.
And yet, that doesn’t mean the golf wasn’t compelling, as long as you got away from the NFL round playoff games.
Even if players carved grueling rounds in the mid-60s from Wai’alae Country Club earlier in the week, Friday night and Saturday afternoon brought some gusty winds to Honolulu, making the Tour’s classic course a proper test. Temperatures were in the upper 70s, of course, but the wind was blowing between 30 and 35 mph, with many crosswind approaches on the Wai’alae green.
“Honestly, I feel like I played better yesterday, but I scored better today,” Chris Gotterup said, with some confusion on his face. His 2-under 68 has him two shots behind Davis Riley’s 12-under lead. Gotterup was just one of a group of players who mentioned how the wind can play funny tricks on your mind, even when you’re just putting.
Saturday’s average score is slightly above par, something we’re not used to seeing on a course that normally dismantles it. If Sunday’s winner finishes at 15 or worse, it will be the highest winning score since 2020. It’s probably the Isles’ way of saying one of two things: Good rescue! OR maybe you should stay a little longer.
And yet, no Tour event will face the same headwinds Sony will find out on Sunday. As we’ve learned for decades, the NFL reigns supreme over every television entity in America, sports division or otherwise, and there are a pair of other round division games that will destroy every ounce of glamorous golf Sony can provide. If the tournament is lucky, snow play in Chicago will end with a bang, so golf’s most die-hard fans will roll in for a few final holes on sun-kissed O’ahu.
Next week’s tournament event — which will be against the NFL’s conference championship games — won’t hurt nearly as badly either. Thanks in part to the cancellation of last week’s The Sentry, next week’s The AmEx will have its strongest field in years with world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler making his season debut.
In that sense, Hawaii’s loss will be California’s gain. We may find ourselves repeating that phrase for many Januarys to come.
