2025 is off to a whimper on the PGA Tour and here’s why…

Mark McGowan
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The Plantation Course at Kapalua is beautiful, but just too easy for the elite pros (Photo by Ben Jared/PGA TOUR via Getty Images)

Mark McGowan

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I’m in the minority when it comes to Irish Golfer writers here, but I’ve always loved the PGA Tour’s calendar year starting event in Hawaii. Having never been further west than California, Hawaii remains one of those bucket list destinations that, barring a lottery win, will likely remain so, but in the meantime, I’ll have to settle for watching it on TV.

Both Ronan MacNamara and John Craven have already laid out their reasons for giving The Sentry a wide berth, and I see their points, but having gorged myself on darts, football and the NFL during the Christmas break, I always welcome golf’s return in the new year.

As the Tournament of Champions, the tournament had an identity. It was a reward for the 30 or so players who’d become PGA Tour winners in the previous 12 months, it was a gentle way to kick off the season, taking their families on holiday to one of the most paradise-like destinations, and picking up a guaranteed cheque that will more than cover the expense (if any expense is actually accrued anyway).

As the ‘Tournament of mostly champions’ as it’s effectively become since the rebrand, it’s no longer that and the grossly inflated prizefund means that it’s no longer just a gentle warmup event. But that’s to be expected, given the way the PGA Tour is going. I’ve made my thoughts perfectly clear on how the obscene money is driving a wedge between the common fan and PGA Tour events, but that’s not what I’m here to complain about. Well, not really….

I’ll have to admit that I didn’t enjoy this year’s edition of The Sentry quite as much as I used to. Maybe that’s because of the aforementioned growing disconnect, maybe it’s because at least three of the five or six best players in the world weren’t there, or maybe it’s because it’s getting a little tiring watching top players bludgeon golf courses to death.

The Plantation Course at Kapalua is 7,526 yards long, which is not short, even by modern standards. Sure, lots of the holes play downhill which reduces the effective length, but the reverse is also true. It’s a rare par 73, but even were it reduced to a par 70, Hideki Matsuyama would’ve still recorded a -23 winning tally.

Is that the golf course’s fault? The pros visit it once a year and every week in between it’s tackled by amateurs, either as members of the club or as visiting guests forking out close to $500 for the pleasure. And for these guys, it’s not easy. You only have to look at the No Laying Up video collaboration with Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth to see the difference between top-tier professionals and low handicap amateurs, even allowing for the added pressure that comes with trying to compete with the game’s best on camera.

You see, the pros aren’t just good, they’re practically incredible. It’s still the same formula for them around a course like Kapalua’s Plantation Course as it was at Royal Troon, at Pinehurst, or at Augusta National. It’s the lowest score over 72 holes that wins, but when eagle, birdie or par are pretty much the only likely outcomes on a hole, it gets a little boring. Televised golf – any golf for that matter – is at its best when there is genuine jeopardy in play. When a three-shot lead is never safe because double bogeys or worse are never out of the equation. Was Hideki Matsuyama ever going to make a double bogey coming down the stretch at Kapalua? Not when he’s using a driver with a sweet spot the size of a 2 euro coin and a ball that he can carry over 300 yards on repeat.

2028 and the ball rollback can’t come quick enough, though whether or not the PGA Tour will opt to enforce the new USGA and R&A directives is another matter entirely.

But they have to, for the sake of the Tour as an entertainment product if nothing else. The telecasts are hemorrhaging viewership numbers, and without any sort of meaningful integration of the rival tour factions, will continue to do so. The prize funds’ growth will eventually stall as it becomes economically unsustainable to continue to keep pumping up the offerings for a sport that fewer and fewer are watching.

The solution to making regular tour golf more interesting to the viewer will likely have to come from elsewhere, and golf courses that play tougher, that ask more challenging questions, and where two-, three-, and four-shot swings are always on the cards is one possible way to do that.

But the truth is that a ball rollback is not enough. Curbing 10 or 15 yards of driver distance will make things tougher, sure, but finding the fairway off the toe at 295 instead of at 310 isn’t sufficient penalty. Driver technology needs to be the next thing the R&A and USGA look to combat, and fairway woods and irons need to follow.

For the rest of us though, we need all the help we can get, so a reduced flight ball should be where the restrictions end.

Then, maybe tournaments like The Sentry will be welcomed with open arms once more, instead of being met with the general apathy that greeted the 2025 edition.

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