The start of next year’s PGA Tour season is one big mystery. Here is the reason
“I am confident that this tournament will return in 2027. I cannot say with certainty where it is.”
The above quote comes from Stephanie Smith, a spokeswoman for Sentry Insurance, speaking to Wisconsin.golf about her company’s tournament — but it felt like an appropriate sentiment given the uncertainty felt throughout the PGA Tour, which currently feels like the league is entering a season of transition.
The fact that Sentry is confident about its future in the Tour program actually gives it more stability than a few of its first-season comrades. Tiger Woods’ Futures Tournament Committee is asking the big questions as it analyzes its tournaments – when, where and, the scariest, why – and as they do on purpose, the competition sits and waits and wonders where it will fit.
One important question seems to be this: Should the PGA Tour play golf in January at all?
The Kapalua question
I spoke briefly with Mark Rolfing – the unofficial mayor of Kapalua, and unofficial tournament host – on Thursday morning, for what would have been the first round of the Sentry and the kickoff of the PGA Tour season. He was in Maui and he breathed a sigh of relief. You couldn’t imagine better weather, he said. And you couldn’t imagine a Plantation course in better shape. Course designers Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coore are on site this week, hoping to make water-saving tweaks to the course. And according to Rolfing, Crenshaw couldn’t believe how good it looked.
“Ben says it’s the best conditions he’s seen in 30 years,” said Rolfing.
Kapalua was scheduled to begin the calendar year as a quarter of a century has passed. As a tournament host, there’s a lot to do: Players love it as a family-friendly island destination, and TV viewers love it as an escape from the cold weather. The course is built into the side of a mountain, which means epic seascape views, and there are layers of tournament history to lean on. All in all, a fun place to spend time, in real life or on screen.
Instead, this year’s tournament was canceled due to water shortages and water management issues in Maui. At first, this seemed to be the only thing. The subject has recovered; Rolfing, a visiting GOLF writer and Kapalua itself all report that the Plantation Course has “clean conditions” as visitors fill the fairways instead of the pros. But the water dispute is real and ongoing, the challenges of hosting and broadcasting a tournament in Hawaii remain, and as the PGA Tour, with new leadership and new committees, re-evaluates its schedule for the 2027 season, it may see rising costs, complicated politics and headaches and proceed in a different direction.
To his credit, Sentry didn’t leave Maui behind. One of the most painful points of any termination of the tournament would be the void left in the local communities; Kapalua is a clear case in point given nearby Lahaina is still recovering from the devastating 2023 fires. But despite the cancellation of the tournament, the entire Sentry team was there this week to announce a $1 million donation to charities – and they plan more later this year.
Kapalua is off the table for the future; it is too early to say what will happen. Sentry’s deal with the Tour runs through 2035, which means, as Smith says, they will be an integral part of the schedule through 2027. What is less certain is when – and where – that tournament will be played.
While in Hawaii…
We haven’t started yet this It’s PGA Tour season, so excuse me for looking at next week’s season-opening Sony Open and instead wondering if it could be … the final show.
The Sony, which first existed as the Hawaiian Open, has been part of the Tour program at Waialae Country Club for half a century. But the Tour’s deal with Sony as title sponsor expires after the 2026 tournament. And its future is connected with Mlindi’s; it’s certainly easier to find the best talent in Honolulu if they’ve spent the past week just a few islands away.
The expiring deal makes it easy to speculate whether the Tour will move away from Hawaii as a tournament venue altogether. There are enough organizational challenges in Hawaii that the new leadership that wants to cut costs, cut tournaments, shorten the football season and create a huge deficit may see this as one of the things they need to cut first. But there is also a middle ground – more on that in a minute.
Meanwhile, in the desert…
American Express 2026 promises to be among the best in recent memory. Aside from Sentry and the plethora of top players that bypass Sony, some of the game’s biggest names – joined by World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler – will begin the PGA West seasons, bringing star power to the desert that has hosted golf’s top talent since the 1960s.
But what happens next year?
“I honestly don’t know,” tournament director Pat McCabe told the newspaper The Desert Sun late last month. “We have a contract with the golf course and the hotel that we will enter [the tournament] in our week. I think it’s all up in the air.”
American Express has a deal with the Tour until 2028. But Sony (last week) and Farmers Insurance (next week) are putting the final touches on their current deals, which puts AmEx in a sandwich of uncertainty.
Speaking of which…
What’s next for Torrey?
This is the opposite of emotional testing. Still, it’s hard to imagine that if Tiger Woods called the gun, he’d willingly pull the Tour off the golf course where he’s had so many iconic moments; he has won eight times at Torrey Pines as a champion, including the 2008 US Open.
But with Farmers Insurance’s deal expiring after this year, there is understandable speculation about the future of the tournament – at least this version of it.
For years, Woods has started his season at La Jolla, making Torrey Pines the start of the golf calendar for Tiger fans. Still, tournament director Marty Gorsich sounded confident in comments to a local news station.
“There’s certainly talk of some change and it could be a big change. To me, that’s exciting, it’s opportunistic. Does that threaten Torrey’s future? I don’t think so,” Gorsich told ABC 10News.
Two visions of the future
It doesn’t take a major dot connector to conclude that Tour is interested in running away from the ball as much as he can. But I would guess that Harris English’s songs last fall about the Tour starting after the Super Bowl might be a few weeks off; why doesn’t he play Sentry in a week before the Super Bowl, when the NFL is on a bye week?
In the Hawaii settlement, Sentry will travel to Kapalua the first week of February in 2027 as an independent kick-off event. This will involve a lot of local politics, and I won’t pretend to understand all the specifics involved (although this NLU podcast lays out some of it, if you will), but if they can make it work and depend on the first chances in Hawaii – something that even the West Coast won’t be given at that time of year – it would feel bigger than ever. After that you can head straight to the WM Phoenix Open, which served as an offering in conjunction with Super Bowl Weekend.
In a continental fix, Sentry could take title sponsorship at Torrey Pines, plugging in as the start of the season as Kapalua and the Tour plan their futures. The Torrey has become an iconic (if not perfect) tour stop. It loses its sponsor. Perhaps the new – and A-1 spot on the schedule – could help its return to prominence.
There may be even bigger changes to come, of course. The Tour program may begin in Florida. The deal with the Sentry would be even more difficult. Some places on the West Coast can fit in as a playground. At the moment, no one has all the answers – which makes it early time to speculate.
In the meantime, enjoy the golf. And know that next year, it will feel different.
Dylan Dethier welcomes your comments at dylan_dethier@golf.com.
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