Seeing a Pure Kapalua is Tough for the Vibes

Thanks to a summer drought, the Plantation Course at Kapalua died. There wasn’t a green blade of grass in sight, and because of that, the PGA TOUR was forced to cancel The Sentry, its annual season-opener. But with current photos of Kapalua sprinkling in on social media, the vibes are at an all-time low.

If you haven’t seen it, the place is pure. It looks ready to stage a TOUR event tomorrow.

For the golf world, the week on Maui signifies the arrival of a new season. A fresh start for every guy on TOUR with countless opportunities on the horizon. And selfishly, it’s nice to watch four days of tournament golf in paradise while there’s nothing but snow out my window.

Did the TOUR make the right call? Yeah, probably. When a course falls into a state of dustiness, for lack of a better word, as Kapalua did, it’s impossible to guarantee what it will look like in a few short months. But, man, it’s a bummer we don’t get to watch prime-time Hawaii golf this week, especially now that we know how well it recovered.

Even if it meant no grandstands and limited galleries, it would have been nice to once again open the season at the Plantation Course. Instead, we’ll have to settle for Waialae and the Sony Open, which will no doubt boast an incomparable field to the star-studded one we would have had at Kapalua—The Sentry is one of the TOUR’s few elevated events.

But big events aren’t too far away. I’ve long said that the golf season officially starts at the Farmers Insurance Open, but this year, The American Express field is lowkey loaded. Scottie Scheffler, Patrick Cantlay, Justin Rose, Sam Burns, Will Zalatoris, Tom Kim, Max Homa, Tony Finau, Adam Scott, Luke Clanton, Wyndham Clark, Sepp Straka, and Rickie Fowler are all slated to tee it up at PGA West from Jan. 22-25.

So, the wait is almost over, but missing out on a pure Kapalua is tough for the vibes.