They speak English in Kapalua's golfing Garden of Eden

Harris English leads a romp by the game’s best players at Kapalua

If your idea of a good time is watching the game’s best run roughshod over paradise, then 2021 is starting off pretty well in your world.

The Sentry Tournament of Champions field cavorted in style at the Garden of Eden also known as the plantation course at Kapalua on Maui this weekend. The 42 competitors recorded 45 rounds of 65 or better.

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True, the raw number totals were aided by the swollen nature of the field, which for the first time included some non-winners. Event organizers permitted that one-season change due to the Covid-inspired reduced number of events – and thus winners – in 2020.

Still the 42 starters’ four-round field average score of 277.26 was the lowest since 2003, and the second lowest since the event was moved to Kapalua more than two decades ago.

It was also a stunning 11 strokes lower than last year’s field average of 288.91. In 2003, when Ernie Els led a similar assault on Kapalua in winning by eight strokes at 261, the field average was 276.64.

The total of 45 rounds of 67 or better dwarfed recent history. In 2020, there were only four such rounds. There had been only 39 since 2017.

There was no runaway, no one-man assault, this weekend. In fact, 27 members of the 42-player field posted at least one run over six-under or lower.

And in a result perfectly reflecting the nature of the 2020 season, the playoff to decide the title at this erstwhile winners-only event came down to two men who were winless in a combined 222 starts.

In the end, Harris English – last victory the Mayakoba in November of 2013 – birdied the first playoff hole to defeat Joaquin Niemann – last victory the 2019 Greenbrier.

Especially given the weird nature of Tour golf in 2020, it would be unfair to view English’s win as a freakish outcome. Few arrived at Kapalua in better form. English was coming off a tie for sixth at the RSM and a tie for fifth at Mayakoba, those finishes accompanied by a fourth at the U.S. Open and a 10th at the CJ Cup since the 2021 season began.

He entered the TOC ranked fifth for the season in stroke average at 69.14. The only guys in front of him were the true megastars: Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Justin Thomas and Xander Schauffele. And English had built his average on more tournament rounds (22) than any of them.

This was so destined to be English’s week that it would have seemed somehow wrong for Niemann to take it from him. The Georgia grad opened with a Thursday 65 to tie Thomas for the lead, then followed with 67 and 66 to tie Ryan Palmer at 198 entering the start of play Sunday.

By then Thomas had fallen four back. Niemann? He trailed by five on the first tee Sunday.

But while English shot a front nine even par 36, Niemann caught fire. He sank a 14-footer for birdie at the par 3 second, made a 53-footer for birdie at the third, stiffed his approaches at six and nine, and turned in 30.

When he holed a nine-footer at the 11th, Niemann had not only erased English’s lead, he’d built his own margin to two strokes.

Birdies at 14 and 16 got him home in 64, although Niemann left English an opening when he posted a mere par at the 66 yard 18th. There Niemann let a seven-foot birdie putt slip by.

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Fueled by a stretch of four birdies between the 11th and 15th, that was all the break English needed. Needing an eagle at the 18th to win, he nearly got it, laying his 220-yard approach 11 feet from the hole and then missing the winner by four inches.

In the playoff, English found the better position with his second, just short of the green. Niemann missed low in heavy collar rough from which he could only manage a par. Niemann chipped close and closed the deal.

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They speak English in the Garden of Eden

By Bill Felber | Jan 11, 2021

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