Sentry Tournament of Champions: A Hot First Round at Kapalua

Eight players take advantage of Kapalua with rounds of 67 or lower Thursday

You can’t win the Sentry Tournament of Champions on Thursday. But you can sure make some good money at Kapalua.

By the weekend, that could be exceptional news for Robert Streb, Nick Taylor or any of the eight players who posted opening rounds of 67 or better at Kapalua’s Plantation Course.

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Harris English and Justin Thomas shot 65 to share the first-round lead. Streb, Taylor, Sergio Garcia, Ryan Palmer, Patrick Reed and Sungjae Im all carded six-under 67s Thursday, standing two strokes back in a tightly bunched field in the 2021 opener.

There remain 54 holes to be played, and the first-day field is unusually tightly bunched. Only 10 shots separate the entire 42-player field on the par 73 layout. Nearly 30 players are within five strokes of English and Thomas. Almost literally anybody could yet win.

But history at least is on the side of the especially low scores. Since the Tournament of Champions came to Kapalua in 1999, 137 pros have posted a total of 316 rounds of 67 or better on the Plantation course. They averaged a top 10 finish, and only 26 of those rounds led to finishes outside the top 20.

Kick-start your tournament with a first-round 67 and the omens are even more positive. Coming in to this year, 58 different players had done that 69 times, and the average finish of those players was eighth. Thomas has done it three previous times, in 2017, 2019 and 2020.

Ten times in 21 tournaments the eventual winner opened at 67 or better. Only four players have turned an opening 67 or better at Kapalua into a finish outside the top 20.

Because I know you’re wondering the paycheck for merely a top 10 finish at last season’s TOC was a few bucks north of $200,000. Thomas got $1.34 million for winning.

The tightness of the field cast a bit of a damper on the enthusiasm any of those 67 or lower shooters might have been feeling Thursday night. Obviously two dozen players can’t all finish in the top 10. When Justin Thomas won last January, he stood one shot behind first-round leader Joaquin Niemann’s 66, but Niemann – who eventually tied for fifth — only had 15 players within five shots of him.

There’s also little doubt that Kapalua played unusually friendly Thursday. The eight first-round sub-68s matches the low first-round number of such scores at Kapalua, in both 2003 and 2014. In a normal year, the course yields 15 such rounds over the course of a full tournament.

Eight 67s or lower is also one more sub-68 round than Kapalua allowed in the first round in 2018, 2019 and 2020 combined.