A few minutes after sunrise on a crisp December morning, Lawrence Cherono’s smooth strides carried him along the back side of Waialae Country Club and toward a Honolulu Marathon record.

Just before sunset five weeks later, a gentle breeze ushered Justin Thomas to the celebration of a remarkable run within the club’s grounds.

Along with Cherono and Thomas making their accomplishments look ridiculously easy, conditions converged with exquisite execution in both cases to produce the most dominant performances in the histories of two of Hawaii’s major sporting events.

In Cherono’s 26.2 miles last month and Thomas’ 72 holes over the past four days, favorable winter weather left the courses without their primary defenses.

Humidity, even in pre-dawn hours, tends to drive up finishing times in the Honolulu Marathon compared to cooler and drier sites. A relatively brisk morning with little wind on Dec. 11 — “conducive” Cherono called the conditions — allowed the field to set a quick pace early only Cherono was able to maintain while lowering the race record by 95 seconds. The Kenyan crossed the finish line out of sight of runner-up Wilson Chebet, who also finished under the previous record, which had stood since 2004.

Waialae’s record book is most prominently protected by wind, and with the trades conspicuously absent most of last week, Thomas led the Sony Open in Hawaii field in plundering the flat course.

When Waialae’s flags hang still, scores go low, and Thomas went lower than anyone in PGA Tour history. He bolted ahead with an eagle on his opening hole of the tournament and ran away from the other 143 entrants, including 11 with major championships on their résumés.

He ended his round on Thursday as the seventh player in tour history to sign for a 59, set the 36-hole scoring record on Friday, tied the 54-hole record on Saturday and took possession of the 72-hole record on Sunday.

A bit of a breeze blew in off the ocean for the final round, but wasn’t nearly enough to knock Thomas off stride. His 5- under 65 dropped his four-day total to 27-under 253, three shots better than the tournament record and one under the previous tour mark set by Tommy Armour III in 2003.

After fending off Hideki Matsuyama for a three-stroke victory in the SBS Tournament of Champions at Kapalua, “this week was something different,“ Thomas said.

He built a seven-shot lead through Saturday’s play, and incessant reminders that no player had blown such a margin prompted Thomas to quit scrolling through Twitter on Sunday morning.

“I was more nervous teeing off today than I was in the other events,” said Thomas, who had already won twice in this season. “Two hours before I started to warm up, I couldn’t look anymore.

“I’m just like, I go out and play OK, a bad break here and there, if someone shoots 9 under, I lose. That’s how I was thinking. … All morning it was tough to keep my mind off things. I probably listened to music five hours or four hours.”

Thomas recovered from an early bogey and made an 8-foot putt to save par on No. 6 to maintain a controlling lead. He then sprinted to a 31 on the back to finish seven shots ahead of Olympic gold medalist and 2013 U.S. Open champion Justin Rose.

He also became the first golfer since Johnny Miller in 1975 to win three of his first five tour starts by three or more shots. Since 1970, the only other golfer to win three of his first five as Thomas has done in this wrap-around 2016-17 season is Tiger Woods.

“For me to win by seven is a huge, huge deal to me,” he said. “I know if I get there again in the future, I will be able to have this to look back on.”

Rose’s 20 under matched last year’s winning total and was one better than Jordan Spieth, who fired a 63 on Sunday and might have pushed his close friend for the title had his putter cooperated the first three days.

All told, the field posted a scoring average of 68.309, with 300 rounds below par to just 85 above 70.

Thomas and Spieth have expressed their affinity for Waialae, which could make the 23-year-olds regulars for years to come.

Golf, like the weather, is fickle, and fortune can change like the wind. But for four days, both clicked to near perfection for Thomas.