A new year for the PGA TOUR begins in style Thursday on the island of Maui, with 17 of the top 20 players in the Official World Golf Ranking teeing it up in the limited-field Sentry Tournament of Champions at Kapalua Resort’s rollicking Plantation Course. It will be a strong first act to set the tone for what promises to be a robust opening month of golf. Eight of the top 10 players in the world, including last year’s Sentry runner-up, Jon Rahm, will be on hand at Kapalua as the tournament celebrates its 25th anniversary on the island. The elite field is limited to tournament winners from the 2021-22 season and those finishing among the top 30 in the last season’s FedExCup. There are 39 players at Kapalua vying for a purse of $15 million, with the winner taking home $2.7 million. The Sentry Tournament of Champions will mark the first of 13 designated events (excluding majors) that will offer a minimum purse of $15 million in 2023 as the TOUR embarks on a new era. Most of the designated events feature purses of $20 million, with the purse at THE PLAYERS Championship in March standing at $25 million. But there is great strength amid other tournament weeks, too. After Sentry, the TOUR will move over to Oahu, a puddle-jump flight, to Honolulu for the Sony Open in Hawaii (Jan. 12-15), where defending champion Hideki Matsuyama headlines a field that includes Billy Horschel and Jordan Spieth. Last January, Matsuyama provided one of the shots of the year at Waialae Country Club, hitting a 3-wood into a bright setting sun to 3 feet to set up a winning eagle against Russell Henley on the first hole of a playoff. Horschel is coming off a season in which he won the Memorial presented by Workday and twice was a runner-up. At 36, he made his long-awaited first U.S. team as a professional, competing on the winning side at the Presidents Cup. Spieth, a winner at the 2022 Valero Texas Open, will be playing Sony for the first time since 2019; in 2017, he tied for third. Waialae is one of the TOUR’s true old-school gems, short by today’s standards (7,044 yards, but a par 70), but always offering a stern test, especially when the island winds stir. The TOUR reaches California and the mainland to open the ‘West Coast Swing’ with the 64th edition of The American Express (Jan. 19-22) at PGA WEST’s Stadium Course and La Quinta Country Club. On the 50th anniversary of Arnold Palmer earning the 62nd and final victory of his legendary career at this event, the field will boast some stout star power of its own, as evidenced by an accomplished quartet of early tournament commitments: Masters champion Scottie Scheffler, the reigning PGA TOUR Player of the Year, as well as Tony Finau, a three-time winner last year, and the close-knit pair of Californians, Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele. All four not only were tournament winners in 2022 but also part of the U.S. Team’s winning Presidents Cup squad at Quail Hollow Club in September. Schauffele made his professional debut at The American Express in 2016, and a year later would win the TOUR Championship; Scheffler, ranked second in the world, tied for third in the desert in 2020; Cantlay finished ninth in 2020 and 2022, opening with 62 last year; and Finau, twice a winner in 2022 (3M Open, Rocket Mortgage Classic), has a top finish of 14th at the AmEx in four starts. January on the PGA TOUR finishes strong with the Farmers Insurance Open (Jan. 25-28) at Torrey Pines Golf Course’s North and South tracks. The South, which hosts weekend play, is the site of two U.S. Open Championships as well as San Diego’s longstanding PGA TOUR stop, which turns 70 this year. One U.S. Open winner at Torrey was Tiger Woods (2008); the other was Rahm, who not only broke through to win his first major at Torrey in 2021 but also captured his first PGA TOUR title there, as well. The place is so special to Rahm that he even proposed to his wife at Torrey. Needless to say, Rahm will be part of the Farmers field. Only once in his six Farmers starts has Rahm finished worse than seventh. Among those joining Rahm are two Americans coming off big seasons in 2021-22: Max Homa, already a winner this season (Fortinet Championship), and Cameron Young, who did everything but win last year. Young, 25, was a five-time runner-up last season, contending in two majors (runner-up at the Open Championship), but didn’t finish the year empty-handed. He made the U.S. team that won the Presidents Cup and in late October, was voted the PGA TOUR’s Rookie of the Year, taking home the Arnold Palmer Trophy. At the TOUR Championship in August, PGA TOUR Commissioner Jay Monahan announced that 13 events beyond the four major championships would be “elevated” with larger purses on the 2022-23 TOUR schedule – these include the four majors, three FedExCup Playoff events, THE PLAYERS, WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play, Sentry Tournament of Champions, and three invitationals (Genesis Invitational, Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard, the Memorial presented by Workday). Four more designated events were later added: WM Phoenix Open, RBC Heritage, Wells Fargo Championship and the Travelers Championship. The new schedule means that top players will have 17 designated events where the best in the world will gather and compete, as well as a minimum of three other tournaments of their choosing. If January is any sign of things to come, the 2022-23 season will consist of great fields and exciting tournaments week in and week out.
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