The PGA TOUR was on the Hawaiian island of Maui last week and now moves 120 miles to the northwest to Oahu for the Sony Open in Hawaii starting Thursday. Most of the top players who competed last week at the Sentry Tournament of Champions are already on their way to the mainland. As usual, the Sony Open field is devoid of many Tour leaders.
Last week, Harris English defeated Joaquim Niemann on the first playoff hole to win the Sentry Tournament of Champions. Both players will make the short island hop to compete in the Sony Open and are among the favorites to win on Oahu.
Webb Simpson is the highest-ranked player who will tee it up at the par-70 Waialae Country Club in Honolulu. Simpson is currently number eight in the Official World Golf Ranking.
The 35-year-old former U.S. Open winner out of Wake Forest is coming off a tie for 17th at the Sentry Tournament of Champions.
The Waialae Country Club has hosted the tournament since its inception in 1965. Sony has been the title sponsor since 1999, and the event is traditionally the first tournament of the calendar year with a full PGA TOUR field.
Last year’s winner was Australian professional Cameron Smith, who defeated Brendan Steele in a playoff for his second PGA TOUR victory. Smith’s 11-under-269 winning score was the highest since Vijay Singh won in 2005 with the same total.
Futures Betting Odds
Simpson, a seven-time winner on tour, has odds of +1100 to win the Sony Open. He is a cut-making machine and is coming off one of the best seasons of his 13-year PGA TOUR career.
Wins at the Waste Management Phoenix Open and the RBC Heritage helped catapult him to a 12th-place finish in the FedEx Cup standings.
A close second in the futures odds at +1100 is Patrick Reed, the 2018 Masters champion. Reed has eight PGA TOUR wins to his credit, the latest at the 2020 WGC-Mexico Championships. He got off to a decent start last week at the Sentry but went 72-70 on the weekend to finish in a tie for 21st.
Last week’s champion, Harris English, is next at +1400. English saw a resurgence in his career in 2020, as he finished 12th in the FedEx Cup after three consecutive years outside the top 100.
His third PGA TOUR win guarantees that he’ll have Tour status for at least two more seasons.
Tied with English at odds of +1400 is PGA champion Collin Morikawa, who finished seventh last week after shooting a disappointing 73 on Sunday. The three-time PGA TOUR winner finished second in the FedEx Cup standings behind Dustin Johnson in 2020.
The fifth player on the futures odds list is Daniel Berger, who was in the hunt last week but couldn’t manage any better than a 72 on Sunday, dropping him to 10th place. Berger hasn’t missed a cut in the 2020-21 season and is continuing the solid play that ended in a seventh-place FedEx Cup finish in 2019-20.
