Sentry Tournament of Champions: Top 10 power rankings at Kapalua

Once the season-opening event, this week’s Sentry Tournament of Champions kicks off the 2020 portion of the PGA Tour’s wraparound schedule.

For those in cold golf climates, this is the time of year where you really start to get jealous. Your next 18 holes are months away, and the clubs are beginning to take on rust. PGA Tour pros have it good year-round, but it’s nice to be them with Hawaii on their January itinerary. Those that have earned get to show at the Tournament of Champions.

Thirty-four players are assembled for the Tournament of Champions at the Plantation Course at Kapalua in Lahaina, Hawaii on the island of Maui.

Brooks Koepka, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, and Rory McIlroy are a few notable absences.

The field includes PGA Tour winners dating back to the 2019 Tournament of Champions.

This is a 72-hole, no-cut/guaranteed money event. These factors help draw in most top players, even if they choose not to stick around Hawaii for next week’s Sony Open in Honolulu.

Kapalua has been the host venue since 1999. It opened in 1991 as the first-ever Bill Coore/Ben Crenshaw designed course. It’s situated right on the ocean and is known for its drastic elevation changes and wide, slanted fairways.

This course allows short and long players to contend as the par-5s historically have not offered many eagles. Shorter hitters can use the ground to their advantage here better than most venues.

Coore and Crenshaw completed a four-month renovation after the 2019 tournament. The course’s routing went unchanged, but the course has been resodded and bunkers have been restored.

The biggest difference will be on the Bermuda greens, which were in rough shape in recent years. They should be rolling smoother and have some slightly different contouring, but they expect to continue to run on the slow side.

December is the quietest sports month of the year (except when it has a Presidents Cup, I suppose), and a lot of guys haven’t competed in weeks, if not months. For that, I’ll rely on course history a lot for my picks.

How sweet would it be to win this event and already have your ticket punched for 2021? I’ve got my eyes on 10 players who can accomplish that on Sunday.