Henley ready to defend Sony title
A few days after 23-year-old Russell Henley blew away the 2013 Sony Open in Hawaii field in his first start as a PGA Tour member, his high school in Macon, Ga., wore Hawaiian shirts and passed out 350 lei.
Stratford Academy celebrated Russell Henley Day with two local TV stations and a luau that lasted through the evening’s basketball game. The 2011 University of Georgia graduate, who majored in consumer economics, added a couple of sixth-place finishes and made more than $2 million last year.
He opens defense of his Sony championship next Thursday. Last time he saw Waialae Country Club he birdied the final five holes to shoot his third 7-under-par 63 of the tournament. Henley’s winning score of 24-under 256 was three shots better than Tim Clark and four better than the tournament’s numerical record of 260.
That was set by John Huston in 1998, when the course still played to par 72, and matched by Brad Faxon three years later when it was par 70. The 256 was the third-lowest score in PGA Tour history, and 17 better than any other 72-hole score Henley turned in last year.
Waialae lends itself to low scores. The last five winners shot four rounds in the 60s. Clark, who was also second at Sony in 2011, was a shot better than the previous tournament record.
Sony Open week starts Tuesday afternoon with the annual Acura Hawaii Pro-Junior Skills Challenge at Waialae. The exhibition contributes $20,000 to the Hawaii State Junior Golf Association. HSJGA members Zoey Akagi-Bustin, Ariel Elftman-Hanson, Kaci Masuda, Tyler Munetake and John Oda qualified to play. Their pro partners will be former Sony champs Jerry Kelly and Mark Wilson, John Daly and Chinese prodigy Tianlang Guan. The fifth pro will be announced later.
The Challenge has changed its format. It begins at 2:45 p.m. with a long-drive contest on the 10th hole, then moves to a closest-to-the hole contest at No. 11 and finishes on the 18th.
Galdiano places sixth in Arizona
Hawaii’s Mariel Galdiano, Allisen Corpuz, Kacie Komoto and Kristina Merkle were all in the top 20 heading into Monday’s final round of the Joanne Winter Arizona Silver Belle Championship, in Chandler, Ariz.
Galdiano, who won the state high school championship in May as a freshman, fired a final-round 69 to tie for sixth.
The Punahou sophomore ended up at 7-under-par 209. She was seven shots behind winner Krystal Quihuis, a two-time Arizona state champion from Tucson. Galdiano also tied for third in her age group (15-16).
Corpuz, also a Punahou sophomore, and Komoto, a Punahou graduate and freshman at Northwestern, tied for 11th at 213. Corpuz shot 74 Monday and Komoto 71. Komoto was third in her age group (17-18).
Merkle took 29th, at 76–220. The Moanalua graduate won the 2008 and ’09 state championships and played collegiately for Tulsa. She was fifth among those 19-23.
The tournament began in 1971. This year’s event had a field of 110, ranging in age from 13 to 23. Previous winners include Hawaii’s Mary Bea Porter-King (1973) and Jeanette Kerr (1980), and Taiwan’s Yani Tseng (2005).
