People love a good whinge, me included, but while Bono’s U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom was worth getting up in arms about over the weekend, The Sentry tournament in Hawaii certainly wasn’t.
No longer reserved for champions of the previous year, the limited-field event saw Hideki Matsuyama run-out a record-breaking winner at 35-under par, shooting rounds of 65, 65, 62 and 65 without the help of WHS. Safe to say the golf purists didn’t like it.
Once again, the soft-touch Plantation Course at Kapalua bowed down to the game’s best as Joe Bloggs, fresh off making one nett par in a nine-hole scramble, took to the keyboard to voice his displeasure at another PGA Tour birdie-fest.
But Joe, what were you expecting? This is an event smack bang in the middle of silly season. Don’t think of it as a tournament. Think of it as a conference. A shmooze session for millionaires to pat themselves on the back for a year well done while they get a head-start on a new one. Only instead of going home with a goodie bag filled with balls, tees, a plastic pitch repairer that snaps on impact and a branded t-shirt you’ll never wear, the 59 attendees share $20million between them, because it’s Christmas. And for leading members of America’s circuit, the PGA Tour is the gift that keeps on giving.
That’s not to say everyone you’d expect to see was there. Rory McIlroy had no intention of starting his season off in Hawaii despite its signature event status, while a prophetic Shane Lowry didn’t beat ‘round the bush on his appearance on Side Gig as to why Hawaii doesn’t feature on his hit-list:
“Me, coming off holidays in Ireland, flying 25 hours and needing to shoot 30-under? No, I don’t think so!”
Now Joe, don’t get me wrong, I have no interest in this tournament either, and if I invested energy watching it with your expectations, maybe I’d be singing a different tune. But schedule a tournament for the first week of January at a resort course in Hawaii and it’s best you keep your expectations at a minimum. Even with a $20m prize fund, this is nothing more than lads walking off the Christmas kilos and trialling new equipment. It has its place on the calendar, but not for you or me.
Sure if it was up to me, there’d be no tournament this week to talk about, and I certainly wouldn’t be scheduling a so-called signature event to coincide with New Year’s hangovers and a half-baked field. From the FedEx Cup playoffs right the way through to the start of the Phoenix Open, the PGA Tour schedule is nothing short of poxy. The players are over-golfed, overpaid and overexposed to fans who could do with an off-season so absence could make their hearts grow fonder.
Instead, the schedule is as relentless as Sunday mass so before Major season starts to breathe context into tournaments, don’t go expecting bang average courses with bang average fields to conjure up anything other than bang average spectacles.
And whatever you do, don’t go sharing this article in Japan.
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