Sony Open gets PGA Tour underway
BY Bruce Young | US PGA Tour | 2009 Sony Open in Hawaii | Preview | 14 Jan 2009
The Sony Open at the Waialae Country club in Honolulu on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, is the traditional season opener for full field events on the PGA Tour and it will be the same again this week when the tournament gets underway on Thursday.
The event has been played at the Seth Raynor designed, Desmond Muirhead redesigned layout in every year since 1965 when Gay Brewer defeated Bob Goalby in a playoff.
K.J Choi looks to defend the title he won last year when he defeated Rory Sabbatini by three shots on a day where the winds blew as much as the scores. Not only has Choi won this event, he has played well on other occasions and he showed enough last week to suggest that his best form is not too far away.
Ernie Els has not played here for the past three years but prior to that he owned a stunning record at this layout. In five times to the event he was twice a winner and never finished worse than 5th. Els arrives off the back of a good week at Kapalua and it would not surprise if he was to take up where he left off when runner up in 2005.
Geoff Ogilvy follows up his great start to the season with his sixth visit here. He has hardly figured in his previous appearances but the same could have been said last week and that result now speaks for itself. It is always very difficult to immediately follow up a win with another but given the form Ogilvy has been in over the past two months then he could do just that.
Steve Stricker is another who has often played well in this event. He has been 4th in each of his past two visits to the event and although he has wintered in the cold of his native Wisconsin it was not all that long ago that he finished runner up to Vijay Singh at the Chevron Challenge.
Davis Love just keeps getting better and better. He was joint runner up last at the Mercedes-Benz and in his previous start he won in Orlando. He has been twice runner up in this event and given his significantly improved form he might just continue the dramatic progress he has made in recent months.
After his runner up finish in this event twelve months ago, Rory Sabbatini had a horror year for much of 2008 but late in the season things began to improve. He has been twice runner up in this event, the other occasion when finishing one shot behind David Toms in 2006.
Adam Scott is playing this event for the 4th time but while he has played well enough on two of the three occasions, his form is still a mystery to some extent as indeed are the issues surrounding his fitness. At his best he is more than capable of handling a field of this quality but the question mark is whether he is close to his best or not.
A player on the verge of success on the PGA Tour is Steve Marino who finished 4th last year. He appears to have played well on Bermuda greens on a regular basis and with one or two good finishes towards the end of last season he might go close to his first PGA Tour victory.
There are eleven Australasians in the field this week, three playing the PGA Tour as card holders for the first occasion. In addition to those mentioned earlier, Aron Price, James Nitties and Marc Leishman will all be excited by the prospect of playing on a tour which they have no doubt long dreamed about and there will be much interest in how they perform. Price has played PGA Tour events previously but for Leishman and Nitties this is an even more special occasion.
John Senden, Nathan Green, Peter Lonard, Tim Wilkinson, who made such an impression on debut in the event last year, Jarrod Lyle and Greg Chalmers all get their chance to start the year off well.
Wilkinson recorded a round of 62 in just his third round of golf as PGA Tour cardholder in this event last year and although he faded in the final round it will be interesting to see how the New Zealander handles things should he find himself in that situation again.
