SONY OPEN: The 2025 PGA Tour season kicks off in earnest this week with the Sony Open, an event that has been a fixture on the schedule for nearly 70 years and whose list of past champions includes some true greats of the game. But it must be mentioned and remembered that the most recent champion, Grayson Murray, who entered last year’s event as the longest of longshots and played bold, fearless golf for 4 days to earn what appeared to be a career-changing win, will sadly not return to defend his title after taking his own life back in May. Murray had been very upfront about his struggles with mental health and surely changed many lives by bringing awareness to the issue and having the courage to be open and vulnerable when speaking about his own battles. May his family be flooded with peace and good memories this week, and may we all be gifted some perspective and, if we’re lucky, a sense of gratitude. Rest in peace Grayson Murray.
This isn’t technically the first event of the year, of course — that would be last week’s cash giveaway in Kapalua, where the birdies were flowing like wine and last place check was $51k. Hideki Matsuyama outraced everyone and set a new PGA Tour 72-hold scoring record in the process, finishing the week at a ridiculous 35-under par to win by three. This is, however, the first full-field event of the season and the first one where players will actually have to earn their paycheck via making a cut, so for my money it’s the true beginning of the season. Let the “real” golf begin…
The venue, Waialae Country Club in Honolulu, should be familiar to just about everyone in the field considering it’s played host to this tournament since 1965 and has undergone very few significant architectural changes over the years. It may not be the exact same course Jack Nicklaus won on in 1974, but it sure looks like it, and that’s more you can say for a lot of old, oft-used tracks. A par-70 that tips out at just 7,044 yards, making it one of the shortest layouts on Tour, Waialae challenges players with tight doglegs, well-placed bunkers, sticky Bermuda rough, and tricky green complexes that nearly always play firm. When the wind lays down the course will yield plenty of birdies, but if it starts blowing things can get really tricky out there, and we’ve certainly seen years — 2020 being the most recent one that comes to mind — when it’s a 4-day grind and the winner is lucky to reach 10-under.
That said, mild conditions are forecasted for this week, so we’re likely to see plenty of red numbers and lots of laid-back smiles. When checking the weather forecast, I happened to notice that this week in Honolulu the temperature is never expected to drop below 70 degrees Fahrenheit and never expected to rise above 80. That, friends, is paradise, and it’s why the Tour has come here in January for 70 years and will probably keep doing so until the Hawaiian Islands sink into the sea. Keep practicing, kids.
WIN MARKET
Recommendations to BACK (odds in parenthesis)
Maverick McNealy (25.0)- Once the top-ranked amateur in the world, McNealy has come along a bit more slowly than some had expected, but now, at age 29 and with 143 starts under his belt, he seems to have turned the corner and is playing the best golf of his career. He’s been very active this winter, playing 7 events since the beginning of October, and a stretch of four top-20s in five starts culminated in a victory at the RSM Classic in November, McNealy’s first official PGA Tour win. He returned to action at The Sentry last week and picked up right where he had left off, breaking 70 in all four rounds en route to a 23-under 269, good for 8th place. He’s played this tournament in each of the past three years and has made the cut each time, finishing 7th in 2023, so he clearly knows his way around Waialae and is poised for his best result here yet. McNealy is a blue-chip option this week and is well worth a bet at a price like 25.0.
Byeong-Hun An (45.0)- The Benny An renaissance is in full bloom, as the man who was having to spend some time on the Korn Ferry Tour just a couple of short years ago has rocketed all the way up to 25th in the Official World Golf Rankings and has his sights set on big things in 2025. Long one of the world’s finest ball-strikers, An saw considerable improvement in his putting over the past year and finished 2024 ranked in the top-40 in both putting average and one-putt percentage, allowing him to contend on a consistent basis, with five top-10s and twelve top-25s across his 22 starts. He’s got a great chance to get this season started with a big result, as he’s proven over the last two years that Waialae is a perfect fit for his game, finishing runner-up here last year and 12th in 2023. Though he’s yet to close the deal on the PGA Tour, An has four international wins and plenty of experience on the sport’s biggest stages, so I don’t anticipate him shrinking from the challenge if in contention on Sunday. He might be my favorite bet on the board this week.
Brian Harman (92.0)- This strikes me as a big price for Harman, who closed 2024 with three consecutive top-25 finishes and has a long and illustrious history at Waialae that includes 9 made cuts in his past 10 appearances, with five top-25s, three top-15s, and a top-5 in that span. And it’s not like Harman went through some prolonged slump last season: true, he didn’t manage to win a tournament for the first time in a few years, but he made 21 of 23 cuts, finished runner-up at The Players, and had three other top-10s. In other words, he’s still the same old Brian Harman, the same guy who contends at Waialae regularly and had shown that he has major championship mettle. The only thing I can find that would help explain this price is the fact that Harman struggled a bit at Kapalua last week, shooting 3-under and finishing near the bottom of the field. But we should be careful about overreacting to one lackluster week, especially since it was the first time Harman had teed it up in awhile and he was essentially knocking off some rust. He should be ready to roll this week and I’m quite happy to take a chance on him at better than 90/1.
