There are more reasons than ever to stay away from Waialae Country Club during Sony Open week this year, but there is still one very important reason to fight the hassle.
As the tour’s slogan proclaimed for 20 years: These guys are good.
The initial field, headlined by major champions Bryson DeChambeau and Hideki Matsuyama, is a little weak, with the 2020 U.S. Open champion (DeChambeau) the lone entrant ranked in the top 10 in the world.
Sungjae Im’s aggressive lines and Kevin Na’s putting mastery will be all over ESPN+’s awesome new coverage, so if you are willing to battle parking and a pandemic, take a seat at the first or 17th holes and enjoy the skills of No. 295 Nate Lashley, No. 296 Lee Hodges or local guys like Garrett Okamura and Peter Jung.
2006 HHSAA champion Chan Kim of Kaimuki (No. 62 in the world, ahead of guys like Eric van Rooyen, Seamus Power and Charley Hoffman) will be here for the first time, but he might be on the top half of the odds sheets as the Japan Tour’s leading money winner — David Ishii is the only other American to do that. Okamura and Jung might be the favorite anywhere else but are serious underdogs here. This isn’t the Mid-Pacific Open.
A Hawaii-born player hasn’t made the cut since Moanalua’s John Oda in 2018. If Okamura or Jung can’t make it to Saturday it will be the first time since 1987 that the tournament has gone four straight years without a Hawaii player working on the weekend. The state could get another entrant today in the Monday qualifier at Hoakalei.
As a hacker who shoots in the 100s more often than he breaks 90, even with the benefit of cheating, my eyes spend as much time at the bottom of a leaderboard as the top. I want to see some carnage, with the faint hope that these guys share an inkling of the same frustration I feel while batting it around Olomana or Ewa Villages. Probably not — they play a completely different game and they do it without drinking too many beers.
Jung toured the aged Waialae layout as a junior at Maryknoll in 2019 and struggled to an 84 in his introductory round, with nine pars and a triple bogey. He improved by six strokes the next morning, parring the hole he tripled the previous day, but finished 12 shots behind 2005 champion Vijay Singh for last place. Jung’s 84 was the highest score the tournament had seen in 24 years and the boy returns to the course as a man this week after winning the Manoa Cup and growing his game as a freshman at Washington State.
Jung can take heart in the fact that he is the youngest member of the club of players who shot a round in the 80s in the Sony Open. Two-time champion Jimmy Walker heads that list, but is joined by familiar names like UH golf coach Scott Simpson, Hawaii golf ambassador Mark Rolfing, Gary McCord, Jim Iams and Herman Wedemeyer, who did it three times in the dark ages. Kapalua legend Larry Ordonio failed to break 80 six times, followed by fellow greats Walter Kawakami (5) and Hawaii Golf Hall of Famer member Toyo Shirai (4).
George Vitense (1966) and Rick Weihe (1968) were the only players to shoot a 90 in the tournament, but that was before a metal driver was even thought of. Gordon Johnson’s 88 in 1985 is the highest score after 1968.
For all of those big numbers, a more representative tally followed. Vitense shot a 75 a day after his 90 and Weihe recovered with an 83, while Johnson put a 75 on top of his 88. For an idea of how good these guys are, go ahead and Google those three names. All of them went home to become legends of the game.
There have been 323 rounds in the 80s since the tournament began in 1965, but only 191 of them since it moved to the beginning of the year. Jung had one of six rounds in the 80s in the past decade. Scores like that are on their way to becoming extinct on this level.
Those numbers would make any PGA player cringe and wrap a club around one of the coconut trees that form Waialae’s famous W. They abhor anything resembling negativity, but this is far from that. In all of the rounds played at Waialae under tournament pressure since 1965, every single player could beat us mere mortals on our best day.
