KAILUA-KONA >> What began with a river of water running down the 18th fairway at the Plantation Course at Kapalua ended with gale force winds plaguing the house that Jack built at Hualalai.
In between was some of the best golf weather on the planet as newbie Justin Thomas walked away the big winner on the PGA Tour and oldie but goodie Bernhard Langer made a similar claim on the senior circuit.
Weather is always an issue at golf tournaments around the world. Anytime a sport needs three or four days to begin and end you have to figure wind and rain are going to show up from time to time to disrupt the proceedings. Hawaii isn’t an exception.
Granted, in January it’s warmer here than most of the lower 48 states on the North American continent. But it doesn’t mean there won’t be wind and rain. The downpours that pummeled Maui in the weeks leading up to the SBS Tournament of Champions softened the fairways and greens of Ben Crenshaw’s Plantation design.
It allowed golfers who were the better ball-strikers to have an edge in the first tour event of the calendar year. Thomas took advantage to win this biggest event of his budding career as he eventually landed in the top 10 worldwide at the ripe, old age of 23.
A week later on Oahu the weather cooperated once again as a windless Waialae Country Club hosted the first full-field event of the calendar year. Olympic gold medal winner Justin Rose would later describe it as perfect conditions to play golf as the world’s best picked apart the defenseless course.
Thomas continued his hot streak with the eighth 59 in PGA Tour history en route to setting the PGA Tour scoring record for a 72-hole event at 27-under 253. Sound familiar? In 1999 when the United Airlines Hawaiian Open became the Sony Open in Hawaii, the golf gods decided to make Waialae a par 70 in hopes of toughening it up.
You may recall John Huston ripped Waialae wide open in 1998. His 28-under-par 260 performance broke a 53-year-old tour scoring record that pretty much proves the old course can be had if the conditions are right. And every now and again Mother Nature cooperates all four days.
Unfortunately for golf fans on the Big Island this week, Mother Nature stepped in in a big way. The first two days of the opening event on the PGA Tour Champions were ideal. Oh, the vog had seemingly settled in for the winter in the still conditions as the 47 seniors had their way with the Jack Nicklaus-designed course.
Rookie David Toms quickly discovered that a 69 led to being lapped by the likes of the 64 of Bernhard Langer and the 65 of Fred Couples. Toms got into the swing of things with the tournament’s best round of 63 on Friday to put himself right into contention.
But when he began his Saturday round with a four-putt from 5 feet thanks to winds gusting at 45 mph, it was decided to pull the plug on the final round of the first event, giving Langer his third Mitsubishi Electric Championship on his 33rd wedding anniversary.
It was an anticlimactic ending if you pardon the pun. The only person happy on the windy scene was Langer, who jokingly said at the trophy presentation, “I know a lot of people here are disappointed, but I’m not.”
For the most part, local golf fans were pleased with the three PGA events that opened the 2017 season. Many observers believe the star power of Thomas and Jordan Spieth produced one of the larger Thursday Sony Open galleries in recent memory as fans came out in a big way to see two top-10 golfers who aren’t old enough to rent a car.
In a little less than three months, the LPGA Tour comes to the Ewa plain of Oahu with the promise of the best women players in the world. While it doesn’t rain that often on that part of the island, you can expect the breezes to kick up at the Ko Olina course to challenge the young women who will try to leave more than a ball mark. But for those who follow the game, weather always plays a part in the final score.
