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It’s that time of year again, when you turn on the TV for the Sentry Tournament of Champions and ask yourself, “Why did I go another year without booking a trip to Kapalua?” The PGA TOUR’s 2022 winners and those who finished in the top 30 of the FedExCup will open the year in the first of the new designated events that will feature the game’s top players competing for elevated purses. Kapalua has become known for its scenic vistas, low scores and wild finishes. A big reason for the theatrics? The uniqueness of the venue. The Plantation Course is not your everyday TOUR layout. Severe elevation changes and dramatic slopes make for an unpredictable four days in paradise. This course was the firstfruits of the famous design partnership between Bill Coore and two-time Masters champion Ben Crenshaw, and it is celebrating its 25th time hosting the Sentry Tournament of Champions. To mark this milestone, and the debut of a new era for the PGA TOUR’s schedule, here are five things to know about the venue where the PGA TOUR annually celebrates the New Year. 1. SEVENTY-THREE’S COMPANY Ernie Els won at 31 under in 2003, and Jordan Spieth nearly caught him with a winning score of 30 under in 2016. Last year saw the lowest score in relation to par in the TOUR’s history (34 under). These scores for a four-round event may seem crazy until you check the scorecard. Kapalua is the only par-73 course on the PGA TOUR schedule, as it comes with just three par 3s. The long holes are long and the short holes are short. The course has seven holes that regularly play longer than 500 yards – four of those are par 5s – but also has four par 4s playing shorter than 400 yards (all on the back nine). Weather, especially the wind, is often a factor in Maui, but players making the trip to the South Pacific better be ready to make some birdies. 2. EXCITING FINISH From the tee box, the 18th hole provides one of the most beautiful vistas in golf, looking straight down into the Pacific Ocean with mountains in the distance. But the journey, more than one-third of a mile when played at its longest, brings danger into play. The par 5 can stretch all the way to 667 yards, making it one of the TOUR’s longest holes. With a wide fairway, players can take a rip off the tee but need to catch some help from a ridge if they want to attack in two. It is site of the first 400-yard drive in TOUR history. Jonathan Byrd hit it in first round of the 2003 tournament. The fairway slants sharply from right to left, and players often use those contours to feed their second shots onto the green, as well. It’s the safer route, as the entire left side of the hole is lined by a penalty area full of thick vegetation. The green also is guarded on the left by bunkers that penalize any misses short or left, especially to the left-side hole locations. Justin Thomas found the hazard in 2020 and made a bogey to fall into a playoff with Patrick Reed and Xander Schauffele, which Thomas eventually won after playing No. 18 three more times. A more conservative second shot is directed out to the right, where the contours will guide the ball back toward the green upon landing. However, if the ball does not get a kick, a downhill pitch shot awaits. While having a par-5 as the 18th hole seems like an obvious birdie opportunity to finish each round, the 600-plus-yard gauntlet also provides a long strip of danger en route to the clubhouse. Birdie is manageable. Eagle is feasible, but risky. 3. RENOVATION PROJECT When the Plantation Course opened in 1992, Coore and Crenshaw made sure to use the West Maui Mountains and Pacific Ocean for stunning views on every hole. Those features won’t change, at least for a few thousand years. But the course’s firmness had decreased at a much faster rate and required a fix after almost three decades of existence. “Years ago, you would hit a tee shot and it would chase and chase and chase unbelievable distances. But as the grass grew and grew for 30 years, a lot of that element was lost,” Coore said before the 2020 Sentry Tournament of Champions. “The course had gotten so soft that it was easy pickin’s for TOUR players and really long for resort players.” In 2019, 100 acres of the Plantation Course’s fairways were stripped and regrassed with a new surface: Celebration Bermudagrass, a denser playing turf than the original Bermuda. This surface could be mowed tighter and controlled against year-round trampling. “The idea at Kapalua always was to land a shot 60 yards short of a green and let it roll on,” Coore said in 2020. “In recent years, a ball landing 20 yards short of a green would just stop. It will play differently. … Players will be able to use side-slopes to feed shots to a flag. And drives will roll out farther, sometimes closer to trouble.” The greens, which had shrunk over almost three decades, were expanded closer to their original sizes. “There’s no question our greens needed a little more calming to offer some more pin positions,” Crenshaw said. 4. STEEP SLOPES Most tourists may come to Maui for the beach. TOUR players come for the elevation. The Plantation Course reaches a high point of 510 feet and spans 316 acres of property. The following week’s Sony Open at Waialae Country Club on Oahu will peak at roughly 10 feet of elevation change on a 120-acre property. The Kapalua Golf website embraces the elevation change by noting, “This course offers plenty of downhill tee shots. You’ll feel like one of the pros when – with the aid of the aggressive slope of the 18th fairway – you will enjoy hitting one of the longest drives of your life.” While most holes feature ocean views, there is no water on the course. However, various canyons, including the notorious penalty area on 18, provide potential trouble. Mountains, not water, define Kapalua. The steep slopes mean the scorecard doesn’t tell the entire story. Holes can play much longer, or shorter, than advertised. Take, for example the 550-yard 17th and 541-yard 15th. The former is a par-4, while the latter is a par-5. The first and eighth holes are two more downhill par-4s that stretch longer than 500 yards. 5. QUARTER CENTURY The 2023 Sentry Tournament of Champions marks the 25th time Kapalua is hosting the Sentry Tournament of Champions. It saw some dramatic finishes right from the start. David Duval won the first Sentry at Kapalua during a hot streak that saw him supplant Tiger Woods atop the world ranking. Duval won by nine – the largest winning margin at Kapalua – then shot a final-round 59 to win The American Express in his next start. He won THE PLAYERS two months later. The next year, Tiger Woods and Ernie Els engaged in a memorable duel that set the stage for Woods’ greatest season. They matched eagles on the 72nd hole to go into a playoff, which Woods won with a 40-foot birdie putt on the second extra hole. He went on to win three majors that year and Els was runner-up in two, albeit 15 shots behind Woods at the U.S. Open and eight behind him at The Open. Jordan Spieth followed up his incredible 2015 – in which he won two majors and the FedExCup – with an eight-shot win in the 2016 Sentry. The next year, Justin Thomas swept the Hawaiian events, winning the Sentry Tournament of Champions and Sony Open. He won the Sentry by three before shooting a first-round 59 at the Sony en route to a seven-shot win. Thomas went on to win that year’s FedExCup and his first major at the PGA Championship. Two years later, Xander Schauffele shot a final-round 62 to rally from five shots back and win his third PGA TOUR title. It is the lowest final-round score by a winner at Kapalua. Thomas, who won the Sentry again in 2020, and Jon Rahm then became the first players to shoot 61 at the Plantation Course, doing so in the third round last year.

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DUBLIN, Ohio – There’s nothing like a Tiger roar. It reverberates around a golf course, shakes the ground, echoes from the trees, and hits every spot on the property. When Tiger Woods does something great, which has been often over the last two-plus decades on the PGA TOUR, his competitors know. It’s unmistakable. At Muirfield Village, where Woods has won the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide five times, the highlight reels are seemingly infinite. The chip-in on 14 in 1999. Or what about the one on 16 in 2012? In each of them, along with the shot and a Woods customary fist pump or primal scream, you see raucous galleries going nuts. RELATED: Rankings Tiger’s wins from 2000 | Inside Tiger’s Memorial dominance And why wouldn’t they be excited. They’ve seen greatness up close. Witnessed history. Been given a story to tell the grandkids. Those roars not only sent shivers down many a competitor of Woods – who now knew they had another step on the mountain climb – but they invigorated Woods himself. The energy would flow through the feisty competitor and seemingly spur him on to even greater heights. So with all that being said, what is Woods going to do this week at Muirfield Village when he makes his long-awaited and much-anticipated return to the PGA TOUR? The Memorial initially was slated as the first Return To Golf event with spectators, but the continuing COVID-19 pandemic has ensured this won’t be the case. Woods will play his competitive rounds without an on-site gallery. Without the roars. Will he be able to summon the same competitive fire? “There’s nothing to feed off of energy-wise. You make a big putt or make a big par or make a big chip or hit a hell of a shot, there’s no one there,” Woods said Tuesday as he readies himself for his first TOUR event since February. “That’s what the guys are saying now, that it’s a very different world out here, not to have the distractions, the noise, the excitement, the energy, the people that the fans bring. It’s just a silent and different world.” The Tiger effect, as it has been called in the past, extends beyond the roars. Woods pointed out that he’s had cameras on him his entire TOUR career and even had large galleries during college and amateur golf. With that comes constant hustle and bustle, movement, things that can get in the mind of some golfers. Woods, however, had been trained by his father Earl from his toddler years to be able to deal with distraction. As Tiger grew older and began to enter competitions, his father would deliberately do things to try to put his son off mid-swing. Woods quickly developed an ability to stop mid-swing and to block out the circus around. Over the course of his incredible career and his record-tying 82 TOUR wins, Woods has been able to use the circus to his advantage. “For most of my career, pretty much almost every competitive playing round that I’ve been involved in, I’ve had people around me, spectators yelling, a lot of movement inside the gallery with camera crews and media,” Woods noted. “Watching the players play over the last few weeks, that hasn’t been the case, and that’s very different, and for the players that are a little bit older and that have played out here for a long time and have experienced it, it is very different. For some of the younger guys it’s probably not particularly different. They’re not too far removed from college or they’ve only been out here for a year or two, but for some of the older guys, it’s very eye-opening.” On Sunday, on Muirfield Village’s famed 18th green, Justin Thomas made a huge 50-foot putt for birdie to potentially win the Workday Charity Open in a playoff. It was the type of moment Woods has produced on countless occasions. But Collin Morikawa countered with a 24-foot birdie bomb of his own and would eventually win the playoff two holes later. Woods said Morikawa, who is one of the young guys recently out of college, would have faced a much tougher scenario with spectators in attendance. “A lot more difficult,” Woods said of Morikawa’s putt had there been on-site fans. “To see J.T. make that putt, he’s screaming, but no one else is screaming. And then when Collin makes it, he didn’t have that much of a reaction, but the whole hillside on 18 would have been just erupted. “I’ve been there when they’re throwing drinks towards the greens and people screaming, high fiving, people running around, running through bunkers. That’s all gone. That’s our new reality that we’re facing. “It’s so different not having the energy of the crowd, and for me watching at home as a spectator and one that has played this golf course and have heard the energy that the fans bring to these holes and these situations, not to have that is very different, very stark really.” So does Woods have a game plan for the new reality? TOUR events for the rest of the season will occur without on-site spectators. It could stretch into the new 2020-21 season also. “For me in particular, I’m going to have to just put my head down and play. But it’s going to be different, there’s no doubt about it,” he says. “That’s one of the more interesting things that it’ll be going forward. I think this is going to set up for not just in the short-term but for the foreseeable future for sure.” Woods enters this week having not played since the Genesis Invitational he hosted in February. His surgically fused back caused him trouble after that event and he had to skip the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard and was a scratch from The PLAYERS Championship before it was canceled after the opening round due to the pandemic. Since then he has taken the safer at-home route – except, of course, for his efforts teaming with Peyton Manning to beat Phil Mickelson and Tom Brady in Capital One’s The Match: Champions for Charity in May. “Physically I was very stiff at LA. I was not moving that well. Back was just not quite loose. It was cold. I wasn’t hitting the ball very far, wasn’t playing very well, and consequently I finished dead last,” Woods said. (He actually finished 68th, last of those to make the cut). “Fast forward five months later… as far as physically, I feel so much better than I did then. I’ve been able to train and concentrate on getting back up to speed and back up to tournament speed.” Woods is no stranger to coming back to competition off a long rest. Last October, he joined Sam Snead atop the all-time wins list in capturing the ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP in Japan after undergoing knee surgery few months earlier. Coincidentally, one of the rounds was played without spectators due to storms. Woods also played without fans in the third round at the 2012 AT&T National at Congressional Country Club, an event that would end up as TOUR win No. 74 in front of raucous final-round crowds. Perhaps these can all be good omens as he tries for a sixth Memorial title and record-breaking 83rd win. “Over the last few years I’ve been used to taking long breaks, long time off and having to build my game and build it to a level where it’s at a TOUR level at home and then come out and play,” Woods said. “I would like to say that I’m going to win the event. That’s certainly the intentions. Whether that plays out come Sunday, hopefully that will be the case. It was three tournaments ago at ZOZO. There’s no reason why I can’t do it again this week. I’ve just got to go out there and do my work and make that happen.” If he does win, we might hear the roars from the litany of living rooms around the country after all.

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