The First Look: Hero World Challenge

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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Playing with a four-shot lead but with the weight of history and haunting missed chances, Rickie Fowler overcomes a bad break and a tough ruling with a pair of clutch birdies to finally win the Waste Management Phoenix Open. Welcome to the Monday Finish, where Fowler broke a nearly two-year win drought, qualified for the Sentry Tournament of Champions, and vanquished his demons at TPC Scottsdale. FIVE OBSERVATIONS 1. Mental toughness told the story. Golf is always about resilience, but Fowler’s triple-bogey at the 11th hole was one-of-a-kind. How did he survive it? It wasn’t easy. After a bogey at the 12th, and with Branden Grace climbing fast up the leaderboard, Fowler had gone from a five-shot lead to one behind. “It would have been really easy at that point to say, ‘This just isn’t my day,’â€� said Fowler’s friend Aaron Baddeley, who for the third time in the last four years hung around the scoring area (he lives five minutes away) hoping to congratulate Fowler on the victory. This time, it worked out. For the winner, it was all about keeping the past in the past. As they stood on the 14th tee, Fowler’s caddie, Joe Skovron, said, “Hey, you would have taken this at the beginning of the week, tied five holes to play. Let’s go win a golf tournament.â€� Fowler did. “You kind of just have to put the first 67 holes behind you and go play five holes,â€� he said. 2. TPC Scottsdale was brutal. Players woke up to rain and cooler temperatures Sunday, restoring the bite to a TPC Scottsdale track that Fowler had tamed to the tune of 64-65-64 (20-under) in the first three rounds. The grass was wet, and the ball was flying every which way, Fowler finding the native area at the third hole, where he made a 30 1/2-foot par putt to steady himself. That was hardly his only brush with danger. He got out of position two holes later, smacking his ball around more native area before finally rolling in a 4 1/2-foot putt for double-bogey. Then came the chaos at the 11th, where drained a long putt for a triple-bogey 7. Justin Thomas shot 72 to finish third. Matt Kuchar, who was trying to extend a perfect streak of 19 straight rounds of par or better this season, and win for the third time in three starts, shot 75 to finish T4. They made up the last threesome and shot a combined 8-over. “I’ve never been in a group that had worse momentum,â€� Thomas said. 3. Grace got a lot out of the week. Coming off a missed cut, South Africa’s Branden Grace was making his first start at the Waste Management Phoenix Open and wasn’t sure what to expect. He shot a final-round 69 for a runner-up finish, his only regret being the tee shot he hooked in the water at the driveable par-4 17th hole, leading to a bogey. “It was great,â€� Grace said of his overall experience. “I really enjoyed it. Obviously being in the final group (Saturday) with Rickie and them was awesome. This place was nuts. It’s everything and more than what I expected and what a fun week it was. I can’t take anything for granted and I had to dig deep today and I did that, it’s just unfortunately one bad shot.â€� In search of his second TOUR win (2016 RBC Heritage), Grace recorded his first runner-up finish in 104 TOUR starts and moved to 31st in the FedExCup. 4. Thomas fought hard without his A-game. Despite slogging through a flat weekend, and an especially difficult course in wet, cool conditions Sunday, Thomas hung around for a 1-over 72 and a third-place finish. It was his best result in five WMPO starts. The only downside was that the 1-over 72 marked his first over-par final-round score since the 2018 Travelers Championship. “I didn’t think I had on a great chance to start the day, or knew I needed to do something special,â€� Thomas said. “And the weather got pretty tough out there and I can’t believe if I would have shot 2-under, I would have been in a playoff. And, yeah, I mean for myself I just didn’t–I couldn’t make the putts.â€� He was 28th for the week in Strokes Gained: Putting. 5. Kuchar battled despite a rare, left miss. Attempting to win for the third time in three starts, Kuchar could have given Fowler something to think about but for a couple of surprising hooks that hurt him at the 15th and 17th holes. “I knew I didn’t have my A game,â€� said Kuchar, 40, who still finished T4 with Chez Reavie (68) and Bubba Watson (71). “Conditions were hard. I was kind of trying to steer it around and then hit a couple good shots. Made the birdie on 13. And then 15 you’ve got four exciting holes to play and I was right there. Any time I struggle with missing left, I struggle. “I missed one left there, missed one left on 17,â€� he added. “Those are typically just not misses I have. And when I’m doing that it, I know it’s going to be a tough day for me and unfortunately it came out at a bad time.â€� His final-round 75 was his first over-par score this season, in his 20th round. FIVE INSIGHTS 1. Fowler led the field in Strokes Gained: Putting (+2.385) and is the first since 1983 to win despite a double bogey and a triple bogey or worse in the final round. He has posted an over-par score in each of his seven 54-hole leads/co-leads, winning twice. It was his fifth victory in 220 TOUR starts, and his first win at the WMPO in 11 starts. 2. It wasn’t just the players in the final group who struggled. The wet, long course really was harder in the rain and cooler weather. TPC Scottsdale, which already had the tees back, felt longer in the elements and played to a 71.575 stroke average in the fourth round, highest of the week by almost a full shot. The second round (70.634) was the second hardest day. 3. Branden Grace, who was seven shots back at the start of the day, was attempting to author the second-biggest WMPO comeback. Kyle Stanley came from eight behind to win in 2012. Grace was also trying to become the 10th player to win the event in his first appearance, and the first since Brooks Koepka in 2015. Grace tied for third in distance of putts made (367’ 7’’).  4. Chez Reavie, who lost in a playoff to Gary Woodland last year, didn’t make a bogey and shot 64-68 on the weekend to finish T4. Something has clicked. Before last year, Reavie had six missed cuts at TPC Scottsdale, with a career best finish of T41 in 2011. 5. Former Arizona State star Jon Rahm (T10) has finished no worse than T16 in four WMPO starts and has four straight top-10s on TOUR this season. In his TOUR debut, Oklahoma State sophomore Matthew Wolff shot 72 to finish T50. Bubba Watson’s T4, in his 300th TOUR start, was his first top-10 since the 2018 Dell Technologies Championship. WYNDHAM REWARDS The Wyndham Rewards Top 10 is in its first season and adds another layer of excitement to the FedExCup Regular Season. The top 10 players at the end of the FedExCup Regular Season will earn bonus payouts from the Wyndham Rewards Top 10. There were no changes in the top six players after the Waste Management Phoenix Open, with Xander Schauffele hanging onto the top spot with a T10 finish. In battling through adversity, WMPO champion Rickie Fowler was the week’s biggest mover, going from 65th to 7th.

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