Not the perfect PGA tee time for Tournament of Champions

Rickie Fowler and Jason Dufner open the new and revamped PGA Tour season, driving off Kapalua Plantation’s first tee at 10:35 a.m. Friday in the opening round of the Hyundai Tournament of Champions. They will be followed by 28 more 2012 winners, with defending champion Steve Stricker playing in the final group with Brandt Snedeker.

A year ago, only 27 played in the TOC, the fewest since the tournament moved to Kapalua in 1999. Eleven players declined the invitation given to every tournament champ from the previous year. When Lucas Glover withdrew because of an injury, more than 30 percent of the field was out.

This year, seven of last year’s 37 champions are missing. The MIA include Rory McIlroy, Luke Donald, Tiger Woods and Justin Rose, the four top-ranked golfers in the world. They combined for nine PGA Tour wins last year.

Also among the missing are former champs Ernie Els and Sergio Garcia. Els holds the tournament record at Kapalua (31 under) and has six top-10 finishes, along with two Sony Open in Hawaii titles.

"I talked to the commissioner (Tim Finchem) this morning for quite a while," said Kapalua’s Mark Rolfing, analyst for NBC and the Golf Channel and Hawaii’s point man for pro golf. "He and I agreed we need to take a good long-term look at the PGA Tour in Hawaii and what’s it going to be like. I know the date is problematic. We’ve got guys skipping that never skipped before. Ernie …that is unbelievable.

"The fact is, it should be one week later. Next year will be worse. New Year’s Day is Wednesday of tournament week. For me, besides losing Ernie and some of those guys, the worst thing is that so many of the guys here (in Kapalua) are not going to Sony. That’s shocking to me. We’ve always had the majority of guys going."

Sony, the first full-field event of the year, is next week at Waialae Country Club. Sony’s commitment extends through 2014 and Rolfing worries weaker fields and the date’s conflict with the International Consumer Electronics Show could mortally wound a tour stop that goes back nearly 50 years.

This is the final year of Hyundai’s contract at Kapalua. The holiday date and diluted fields make it tough on extension talks.

Rolfing favors expanding the TOC’s eligibility list to include the top 50. Last year he talked about turning it into an "all-star" format that includes fan voting if the season was changed to a fall start, which it was. The 2014 TOC will actually be the seventh event in the 2013-14 season and come after a six-week break.

Next year’s TOC will feature winners from the calendar year — at least those who show up. It is not the first time the TOC has tinkered with its dates. The event debuted in 1953 and the first 33 were played in April or May.

But Rolfing’s new priority is moving Hyundai and Sony back a week, to avoid the complications and high costs of a holiday week and the electronics show.

"I’ve talked to a whole lot of players," Rolfing says, "and I think one week would make a huge difference."

Stricker would probably come any time. He has four top 10s in the last five years on Maui and has won more than $2 million at Kapalua and also at Sony — where he has never actually won.

Stricker, 45, is the only TOC player in his 40s. He is 18th in the World Golf Rankings and among eight here in the top 20, with Bubba Watson (8), Dufner (9), Snedeker (10), Webb Simpson (11), Ian Poulter (12), Keegan Bradley (13) and Nick Watney (20). Masters champ Zach Johnson (23) is also here.

Johnson and Watson are playing together Friday, which should provide an intriguing introduction to a new TV graphic called Driving Grid. The graphic is described as "similar to the First and 10" lines used in NFL broadcasts. The lines will be marked in 25-yard increments on the 18th fairway, where 41 drives of 400 yards-plus were launched last year. There were only 26 more in the rest of 2012.

NBC Sports will produce both Hawaii events, which Rolfing terms "a huge, huge change and big upgrade." There will be 17 more cameras at Kapalua than there were last year.

Along with its schedule, the tour also revised its qualifying system this year. Instead of Q-School, the only way to earn a playing card will be through a series of four tournaments called "The Finals." That will include the top 75 players from the Web.com Tour and 75 from the PGA Tour (those ranked Nos. 126 through 200 in FedEx Cup points).

CORRECTION: The Masters champion is Zach Johnson. An earlier version of this story and the story in the print edition had a different first name.