KAPALUA » No sponsorship in place, the world’s top four players going MIA and the two-day delay to the start of the 2013 PGA Tour season due to inclement weather have cast doubt on the popular local phrase "Maui no ka oi." At least golf-wise.
All you had to do was look at the downcast expression on longtime Valley Isle resident Mark Rolfing’s face to see the pain and disappointment so many of the local folks here are feeling at this week’s Hyundai Tournament of Champions.
This will be the last time the tour starts here, a tradition that started in 1999, due to a new wrap-around schedule that leaves this event No. 7 on next year’s tournament list. With the emergence of the world golf venues, the continued development of the global golf stage and the importance of back-loading a player’s schedule due to the FedEx Cup, playing in Hawaii has lost a lot of its luster.
There are plenty of ideas in the old suggestion box about what this tournament should do to revitalize its status. Some say start a week later to avoid the holiday rush, others say expand the field beyond the winners-only format and still others are even hinting that a return to California is the simplest solution of all.
Tour commissioner Tim Finchem likes the Plantation Course and its sweeping vistas that look so good on television to all the folks freezing back home. But even that perceived advantage has fallen on hard times this week.
What people saw the first two days on the Golf Channel was reminiscent of Superstorm Sandy, as touring pros battled the elements without ever making it out to the more exposed back nine.
Tour official Slugger White said Saturday that golf balls were blowing 18 inches uphill on the steep 10th green. A ball placed at the top of that same patch of grass rolled 20 yards downhill into the fairway. Unplayable and unfair were the descriptions of the day.
THE FUTURE HERE looks as bright as the dull, gray clouds that covered Molokai the first two days. If someone were standing on the opening tee for the first time, they wouldn’t even know that island existed due to the shroud of wind and rain hovering over the normally scenic fairway. Not exactly what the Hawaii Tourism Authority had in mind. Or Finchem, for that matter.
So, what’s to be done? Nobody knows. That’s the saddest part of this whole ordeal. There doesn’t seem to be a solution beyond status quo. As Rickie Fowler noted, moving the tournament somewhere else wouldn’t guarantee any more participation. Defending champion Steve Stricker said it’s a long way to come. But so is Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, where top players Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods are scheduled to begin their 2013 campaigns.
Some people have hinted that the PGA is already a dead tour walking. With so many events popping up around the globe, coupled with the demands the FedEx Cup puts on the players in late summer, the end of things as we know them might already be at hand. As Brandt Snedeker put it, you can’t play in 32 events.
That simple fact leaves these two golf gatherings in the Pacific — the Tournament of Champions and the Sony Open in Hawaii — vulnerable. Sony Corp., which has faced its own fiscal cliff, has one year left on its contract after this week. If something happens to the TOC on Maui, forcing it to flee elsewhere, then the 2014 Sony at Waialae Country Club could be next.
Don’t think it can happen? Just ask Disney, which had been a part of this tour for 41 years. Done. It’s an ever-changing landscape that could leave the 50th state barren as early as 2015.
Reach Paul Arnett at parnett@staradvertiser.com or 529-4786.
