Eric Dugas and Kevin Carll set themselves apart in this week’s 44th Aloha Section PGA Stroke Play Championship. They won some great prizes and now they get to work their okoles off the next four months.

Dugas, a pro at Makena Golf &Beach Club, successfully defended his title Tuesday at Kapolei. Carll finished two shots back. No one else in the 24-member field was under par or within six shots of them at Kapolei.

Dugas won $2,300 and a place in the 52nd PGA Professional next April in South Carolina. The top 20 there are invited to the 2019 PGA Championship at Bethpage Black in New York.

Best of all, Dugas gets to play in his fourth Sony Open in Hawaii. The PGA Tour’s first full-field event of the year is Jan. 10-13 at Waialae Country Club.

Carll, Waialae’s head pro, won $1,600, a spot in the PGA Professional and the opportunity to watch Dugas in January.

Between now and then, both will be ridiculously busy heading into their high season.

Carll has a series of major club tournaments leading up to WCC’s 54th year hosting the tour, which comes with its own infinite details. The course just renovated its first and ninth holes (Sony’s 10th and 18th).

The Aloha Section PGA Stroke Play Championship morphed into the PGA Tour’s Hawaiian Open at Waialae in 1965. Hawaii’s Ted Makalena won the “PGA of Hawaii” title that year and the second Hawaiian Open the next.

Dugas will be making his fourth appearance at Sony, winning the Aloha Section three times and qualifying in 2014, when he made his only cut. That $10,000-plus paycheck was about a quarter of what he collected the next year on PGA Tour Latinomerica.

Now he has four months to find a way to compete with the best players in the world, again — after his work is done at Makena. The club encourages him to play with the membership as much as he can, but his job “goes a lot deeper than golf.”

Still, he doesn’t know how to prepare beyond wanting to win.

“I’m not going into these events with anything on my mind other than playing the best I possibly can,” Dugas said. “I know a lot of guys in the field and when I am playing well I can compete. I’m trying to take this the same as any other tournament.”

There is a comfort level for him, in his familiarity with Waialae and the easy travel. Last year, his entire family from Massachusetts came over and his little brother caddied for him.

Carll has played Sony twice and knows how difficult it is to replicate playing at a competitive level when you are a club pro. He would love to see Dugas make another cut and figures “top 20 would be an amazing feat.”

Maybe he should follow along. Dugas and Carll played in the same group Monday and Tuesday this week. Both acknowledge the other pushed them to play better.

Dugas shot 68 both days and Carll 69. They were tied until Dugas drained a 30-foot eagle putt on the 17th Tuesday.

“I always enjoy this event because of the incentives and the quality of the players that participate,” Dugas says of the Section Championship. “In my job, you play a lot of member golf so I definitely get excited at these competitive events.

“Do I miss the hotel rooms and travel on the tour? I can’t really say yes, but I miss the competition for sure.”

In January, he will get plenty of that. And he knows the hotels almost as well as Waialae. Besides … “If you are spending a lot of time in your hotel in Hawaii,” Dugas says, “you are doing something wrong.”

Kapalua Plantation assistant pro Ryan Cancino (71-144) finished third on Tuesday. Kevin Shimomura, Ko Olina’s Director of Player Development, was the only golfer aside from Dugas and Carll to shoot in the 60s. He closed with 68 to finish a shot behind Cancino.