With a new year comes a restarted PGA Tour season and as usual, last year’s winners are headed to Hawaii to kick things off.
The field for the Sentry Tournament of Champions has been finalized at 42 players, making it the largest field in tournament history. But that also comes with a caveat.
Traditionally, the event at Kapalua’s Plantation course is a winners-only event for players who claimed a trophy in the previous calendar year. But because of the Tour’s late-spring break due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the top 30 players in the FedExCup standings who advanced to the 2020 Tour Championship also became eligible for the Sentry Tournament of Champions.
As a result, we’ll get a glimpse of eight of the top 10 players in the Official World Golf Ranking at this week’s event, including world No. 1 Dustin Johnson as well as defending champion Justin Thomas, Bryson DeChambeau, Collin Morikawa and Xander Schauffele.
Only Rory McIlroy and Tyrrell Hatton are missing from that top 10. Among players who qualified, Jim Herman is also not in the field. Herman tweeted on Dec. 31 that he would miss the year-opening event because of COVID.
https://twitter.com/gohermie/status/1344672412659544065
Five players will tee it up at the Sentry Tournament of Champions for the first time: Carlos Ortiz, Viktor Hovland, Sungjae Im, Jason Kokrak and Richy Werenski.
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