Adam Woodard and host David Dusek break down Justin Thomas’ playoff win at the Sentry Tournament of Champions and Patrick Reed, the villain.
In episode No. 28 of the Forward Press, Golfweek’s David Dusek chats with Adam Woodard about the exciting finish from Kapalua at the Sentry Tournament of Champions, why Patrick Reed is the villain of golf, and they discuss their birdies and penalty shots of the week.
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Forward Press is a weekly Golfweek podcast. Each episode, you’ll get insight and commentary on all that is golf from David Dusek, Beth Ann Nichols, Steve DiMeglio, Eamon Lynch and Adam Schupak, as well as special guests throughout the industry.
During the third playoff hole at the Sentry Tournament of Champions, a fan yelled “Cheater!” at Patrick Reed on the green.
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The year 2020 is shaping up to be a long one for Patrick Reed and caddie Kessler Karain.
It’s been a month since Reed was given a two-stroke penalty during the third round of the Hero World Challenge for a pair of practice swings taken in a waste bunker, and golf fans from Australia to Hawaii refuse to let the 2018 Masters champion forget it.
On Sunday night during the final round of the Sentry Tournament of Champions at Kapalua, Reed was in a three-way playoff with defending champion Xander Schauffele and Justin Thomas. Schauffele was ousted after the first hole, but Reed and Thomas went two more holes before Thomas ultimately won with a birdie.
Reed had a birdie putt of his own to put the pressure on Thomas, and shortly after making contact with his ball, a scream of “CHEATER!” emerged from the silent crowd as Reed’s putt missed.
The Sentry Tournament of Champions was the first Tour event of 2020, and as pointed out by the Action Network’s Jason Sobel, if this is happening in Maui, it’s going to be a long year for Reed.
Check out how much each player took home after the PGA Tour’s first event of 2020, the Sentry Tournament of Champions.
It pays to win on the PGA Tour.
This week’s Sentry Tournament of Champions at Kapalua’s newly-renovated Plantation Course featured a winners-only field of those victorious in the 2019 calendar year, and it took some extra holes to crown the champion.
Justin Thomas took home the trophy in a playoff against Xander Schauffele and Patrick Reed, as well as the $1.34M top prize and 500 FedEx Cup points. Schauffele was eliminated with a par on the first playoff hole, while Reed ultimately lost on the third playoff hole with par.
Take a look at how much each player earned this week in Hawaii.
Now healthy, No. 5 in the world Dustin Johnson makes his return to the PGA Tour at a course he knows all too well.
Dustin Johnson was well on his way to producing another huge year in 2019 when he won twice in the first two months, returned to No. 1 in the world and then posted two second-place finishes in the first two major championships.
Then DJ basically went AWOL.
After winning the Saudi International on the European Tour and notching his 20th PGA Tour title at the World Golf Championships-Mexico Championship, Johnson tied for second behind Tiger Woods at the Masters and finished runner-up to Brooks Koepka in the PGA Championship.
After that, however, Johnson didn’t finish in the top 10 again in eight starts to end the 2018-19 season, with a tie for 20th in the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational and Canadian Open his best results. It was the longest stretch without a top 10 in a season since his rookie year in 2008.
Even when he won twice and contended in the first two majors, Johnson knew something just wasn’t right with his left knee. He rehabbed the knee instead of opting for a surgical procedure, but as the weeks passed, the knee got progressively worse.
As did his form. Johnson said he was “hanging back too much” in his swing and losing control over the golf ball. As much as he tried, he couldn’t make the ball do what he wanted it to do. Johnson decided enough was enough and after the Tour Championship, he had arthroscopic surgery Sept. 5 to repair cartilage damage. The procedure was considered routine and similar to one he had to the same knee in December of 2011.
Johnson, 35, didn’t play again until the Presidents Cup in December, when he went 2-2-0 as the Americans defeated the Internationals. In Australia, Johnson said there were just a few moments of minor pain in the knee that have now disappeared.
“Game is in good form, so I’m excited about this year,” Johnson said ahead of Thursday’s start of the Sentry Tournament of Champions on the Plantation Course at Kapalua in Maui.
“I’m healthy. My knee feels good. No issues there. So I’m looking forward to this year and hopefully getting back to the form I was in a couple years ago.”
He’s in the ideal spot to make that happen.
Maui is one of Johnson’s favorite places in the world and the Plantation Course fits him to a tee – long, mountainous and scoreable. This will be Johnson’s 10th start in Maui and he hasn’t been out of the top 10 since 2010, winning in 2013 and 2018.
In 35 trips around the Plantation Course, he’s failed to break par just four times.
“It’s a place I always enjoy coming to,” said Johnson, the No. 5 player in the world.
Johnson didn’t waste time getting to the course upon his arrival in Hawaii and played the revamped, par-73 Plantation Course every day for a week ahead of the first round.
He likes the changes to the course – a few new tees making the course longer, and the new greens that are playing firm. And he likes feeling 100% again.
“It’s a great way to start off the year,” Johnson said. “I was pleased with the game and how I played (in the Presidents Cup), especially being my first week back and coming off of surgery. My game is in good form. I feel pretty good again.”
This week at the Sentry Tournament of Champions in Hawaii, some of the PGA Tours best are embracing the island lifestyle with their attire.
The PGA Tour’s opening event of a two-week swing off the mainland in Hawaii has a unique twist: You have to win to get in.
Thursday marks the opening round of the Sentry Tournament of Champions at Kapalua’s Plantation Course. All 34 players in the field have one thing in common, and that’s a victory in 2019.
At the Tour’s first tournament of the new year, the winners-only field is in for a firm, fast and bouncy experience this week after a nine-month renovation project at the Plantation Course.
That said, some of the game’s best have put aside their normal tournament attire to embrace the island lifestyle.
Rickie Fowler during the pro-am prior to the Sentry Tournament Of Champions. (Photo: Getty Images)
During the practice rounds for the $6.7 million event, some of the competitors dressed as if this week in Maui was just another week at the beach.
Famous for his bright Puma gear on the course, fan-favorite Rickie Fowler rocked a bucket hat during Tuesday’s practice round and went all-out during Wednesday’s pro-am in paradise. His matching blue shorts and button-down shirt were both covered in pineapples.
Fellow Puma ambassador Gary Woodland joined Fowler in debuting different versions of Puma’s new Saltwater Collection at last month’s Hero World Challenge and turned some heads in the process.
While Woodland’s attire was rather pedestrian earlier this week, current FedEx Cup leader Brendon Todd joined Fowler on the Pineapple Express, donning a fun hat that featured the tropical fruit.
Brendon Todd looks on during the pro-am prior to the Sentry Tournament Of Champions at the Kapalua Plantation Course. (Photo: Cliff Hawkins/Getty Images)
Here are the Round 1 tee times for the PGA Tour’s Sentry Tournament of Champions at the Plantation Course at Kapalua.
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The PGA Tour is back as the new year kicks off in Hawaii. Thirty-four winners from the 2019 season assemble this week at the Plantation Course at Kapalua.
The loaded field features 13 of the top 30 players from the 2018-19 FedEx Cup standings, as well as seven of this year’s top 10. There will be 15 first-time winners, the second most in tournament history after 19 competed in 2003 when the event was called the Mercedes Championships.
While the field features heavy-hitters like Justin Thomas, Jon Rahm, Rickie Fowler and Dustin Johnson, there are a handful of big names who qualified but failed to commit, like Brooks Koepka, Rory McIlroy, Phil Mickelson, and Tiger Woods.
Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw finished a project at Kapalua, where thatch buildup had slowed the roll in the fairways.
The PGA Tour players in this week’s Sentry Tournament of Champions are in for a firm, fast and bouncy experience, the result of a nine-month renovation project to Kapalua’s Plantation Course that restored much of the original intent of designers Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw.
The debut course of that now-famous design duo opened in 1991, playing some 400 feet up the side of a mountain in Maui, Hawaii. The coastal course features wide fairways and dramatic slopes, with long views over Honolua and Mokuleia bays. The course has become a staple of the PGA Tour, blasting snow-bound golfers back on the mainland with views of sunshine, tropical breezes and the occasional breaching whale.
The Plantation Course played firm and fast for years, but the venerable track – rated No. 1 on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list for public-access layouts – had started to show its age. Thatch buildup had slowed the roll in the fairways, and regular maintenance and top-dressing of the greens had softened some contours and steepened others, leaving fewer reasonable locations for pin positions.
Coore and Crenshaw returned to start a project shortly after the 2019 Tournament of Champions to restore the firm conditions and recreate more hole locations on the greens. Working with management company Troon Golf, which operates the Kapalua courses, and with former golf professional and current Golf Channel personality Mark Rolfing, Coore and Crenshaw rebuilt the greens and bunkers, restored tees and re-grassed the entire property. The course reopened in November.
The second hole at Kapalua’s Plantation Course during restoration (Courtesy of Keith Rhebb)
The course routing is the same, but the fairways are now Celebration Bermuda grass and the greens are TifEagle Bermuda. The 93 bunkers also were rebuilt with a capillary concrete liner system to help handle heavy rains, with several bunkers being reduced in size while others were expanded, all with more natural shapes and edges.
Keith Rhebb, owner of Rhebb Golf Design and a frequent contractor who does course-shaping work for Coore and Crenshaw, spent about three months at Kapalua. Having worked on top-rated courses such as Cabot Cliffs in Nova Scotia, Streamsong Red in Florida and the soon-to-be-opened Sheep Ranch at Bandon Dunes in Oregon, Rhebb said the work at Kapalua was all intended to restore the original playing conditions, where wide fairways offered strategic options but also could play tighter because a golf ball might keep trundling along until it reached trouble.
“The biggest thing was, the ball wasn’t rolling in the fairways as much,” Rhebb said. “The length of the course, for (resort guests) coming to play, it was just getting way too difficult. It had more to do with the conditioning of the fairways – the thatch was slowing the ball down. With the new Bermuda grass, Celebration, it can get a better surface to it to get the firmness back in the fairways. They really de-thatched the fairways, got almost back to basically the dirt and sprigged right back into the fairways.”
Coore and Crenshaw’s assembled teams included Dave Axland, Jimbo Wright, Jeff Bradley and Riley Johns, as well as 15 to 20 contractors. The group faced tight deadlines to finish everything in time for this week’s Tournament of Champions, with frequent logistical and operational challenges tied to renovating a course on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
“You could really feel that pressure because there’s a hard date,” Rhebb said. “All kinds of things could have happened, created big issues. They were shipping in the grass sprigs from another island that were, I think, in refrigerated shipping trailers. There could have been one delay in a shipment, and everything would have been off. It took a lot of logistics and planning to make sure everything came together. …
“Andrew Rebman (Kapalua’s director of agronomy) and his crew pulled it all off, got everything grown in and ready, and kudos to them. I can’t even imagine the amount of pressure for them, having construction going on and having to wait on us before they could get to work, knowing they’re going to host a tournament that’s going to be on TV in January. Andrew, with his skill set, he’s going to have that place dialed in.”
A Sand Pro used to finish greens during the restoration of Kapalua’s Plantation Course (Courtesy of Keith Rhebb)
Rhebb said several of the greens had developed slopes of as much as 4 or 5 degrees in areas, rendering them unpinnable as the surfaces approached Tour speeds because balls wouldn’t stop rolling. Those slopes were the result of nearly 30 years of top-dressing with sand and other common maintenance procedures that buried some contours and steepened others. The green contours also no longer properly flowed into the contours outside the greens.
The crew utilized laser scanning and 3D computer modeling before starting work, then recreated slopes of around 3 degrees that extended playable green surfaces and opened up new hole locations.
“When we cored out those greens, it was almost like the rings of a tree. You could see the years of buildup,” Rhebb said. “What should be about 18 inches at most of the green surface mix, there was in spots two feet or more of mix in the greens. With almost 30 years of top-dressing, it was just time to come back and renovate these greens.”
The 2020 Sentry Tournament of Champions field is loaded with stars like Justin Thomas, Jon Rahm, Rickie Fowler and Dustin Johnson.
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Some of the PGA Tour’s best are bound for paradise.
Thirty-four winners from 2019 have officially committed to the 2020 Sentry Tournament of Champions, the Tour’s first event of the new year, at the Plantation Course at Kapalua, Jan. 2-5.
The loaded field features 13 of the top 30 players from the 2018-19 FedEx Cup standings, as well as seven of this year’s top 10. The field contains 15 first-time winners, the second most in tournament history after 19 competed in 2003 when the event was called the Mercedes Championships.
While the field features heavy-hitters like Justin Thomas, Jon Rahm, Rickie Fowler and Dustin Johnson, there are a handful of big names who qualified but failed to commit, like Brook Koepka, Rory McIlroy, Phil Mickelson, and Tiger Woods.
