This article is part of our DraftKings PGA DFS Picks series.
SENTRY TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS
Purse: $15M
Winner's Share: $2.7M
FedEx Cup Points: 500 to the Winner
Location: Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii
Course: Plantation Course at Kapalua
Yardage: 7,596
Par: 73
2022 champion: Cameron Smith
Tournament Preview
They still call it the Tournament of Champions. But from here on out, the PGA Tour's annual lid-lifter will in effect be the Tournament of Champions Plus Some Others.
As part of the myriad changes the Tour is undergoing, the TOC is expanding beyond tournament winners from the past 12 months to include anyone who qualified for the season-ending Tour Championship (or, in the Tour's vernacular, "The top 30 of the final 2022 FedExCup Playoffs and Eligibility Points List"). This week also kick-starts the Tour's new commitment to the top players as a counter to LIV Golf, with the first "elevated" tournament of the season (or, in our vernacular, "More money for the best guys"). The purse has jumped from $8.2 million last year to $15 million, with the winner getting comfy $2.7 million.
That's quite a lot of cash for just 39 guys to split. The field size matches the second-largest ever for the TOC, trailing only the 45 from 2021, when things were all out of whack because of the pandemic. For the second year in a row, this field would've been 40 had Rory McIlroy shown up. Now the the world No. 1, McIlroy's pass opens the door for Scottie Scheffler to return to the top spot, needing only a top-3 showing, according to Twitter's noted OWGR expert, @VC606.
Scheffler, the 2022 Masters champion, heads a field that includes 17 of the top-20 in the world rankings, including two other major winners from last year, Justin Thomas and Matt Fitzpatrick, plus Jon Rahm, Patrick Cantlay, Xander Schauffele, Viktor Hovland, Collin Morikawa, Tony Finau, Jordan Spieth and Tom Kim. Notably, world No. 7 Will Zalatoris returns from a five-month absence (two herniated disks in his back). Besides McIlroy, the only top-20s missing are No. 3-ranked and 2021 TOC champion Cameron Smith, who is now with LIV, and No. 20 Shane Lowry, who somehow didn't qualify.
Normally, first-timers rarely contend at Kapalua, thanks largely to the enormous and undulating greens that take time to master. This year, there are a hefty 13 TOC newcomers: Zalatoris, Fitzpatrick, Kim, Cameron Young, Sahith Theegala, Stepp Straka, Tom Hoge, Luke List, J.J. Spaun, Adam Svensson, Ryan Brehm, Trey Mullinax and Chad Ramey.
The course is nearly 7,600 yards, but as we know, it plays far shorter as a par-73 and with massive elevation drops buoying distances. We'll surely see some 400-yard drives again this week. Who could forget Dustin Johnson's 430-yarder five years ago that finally settled inches from the cup on No. 12, oh-so-close to a mind-boggling par-4 hole-in-one? Still, we have seen shorter hitters excel with Spieth (2016), Zach Johnson (2014) and Steve Stricker (2012) winning. In fact, the golfers absolutely will need to bring their short-game acumen to succeed this week, as scrambling and putting have historically been critical. The bermudagrass greens average a whopping 8,700 square feet and run about 11 on the Stimpmeter. There are only three par-3s. There are no par-4s between 450 and 500 yards; they are either shorter (eight holes) or longer (three). In fact, one of the par-4s, the 540-yard seventh, is longer than one of the four par-5s, the 526-yard fifth. The 14th should be fun, a baby 301-yard par-4. The course concludes with one of the longest holes in all of golf, the 677-yard 18th that plays not only downhill but downwind, making it a must-birdie hole. Closing the loop on one of the quirkiest courses we'll see all year, there are 93 bunkers and, even though they're playing on an island, there is absolutely no water in play. Bonkers.
After the 2019 TOC, there was a substantial renovation of the Plantation Course, maybe as big a makeover as any PGA Tour course has had in just one year. In a nutshell, they wanted to make it harder. Original architects Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw were brought back and they were, in a word, thorough. They moved tee boxes, reworked bunkers, re-grassed all the holes, made changes to the greens. To be sure, it's still a bomber's paradise, but Coore and Crenshaw tried to add weight to the second shot, and make the golfers play the angles more with their drives. For one year, it appeared to work. In 2020, the Plantation Course ranked in the middle of the difficulty pack, 20th hardest out of 41 tracks, and Thomas' winning score in a three-way playoff with former champs Schauffele and Patrick Reed was only 278 -- 14-under par. That was a seismic nine shots worse than in Schauffele's 2019 win. Alas, it appears all that had more to do with the extreme wind over the final 54 holes. Because in 2021, Harris English, along with Joaquin Niemann, soared back to 25-under before English won on the first playoff hole. And then last year, all hell broke loose, with three guys exceeding 30-under. Smith won at a surreal 34-under, one shot ahead of Rahm and two better than Matt Jones. Kapalua ranked as the easiest of the 50 courses played on the PGA Tour last season, with a scoring average of nearly five shots under par.
As for the weather, duh, it's Hawaii, it will be beautiful. Highs will be around 80 all four days. The Thursday forecast calls for a small chance of rain. Winds will be moderate throughout the week, but we know they can gust on Maui.
Fun Kapalua factoid: Last year, there were only five over-par rounds in the entire tournament.
Key Stats to Winning at Kapalua
The most important indicators every week are current form and course history. "Key Stats" follow in importance.
• Driving Distance
• Strokes Gained: Putting
• Strokes Gained: Approach/Greens in Regulation
• Strokes Gained: Around-the-Green/Scrambling
• Birdie Average/Birdie-or-Better Percentage
Past Champions
2022 - Cameron Smith
2021 - Harris English
2020 - Justin Thomas
2019 - Xander Schauffele
2018 - Dustin Johnson
2017 - Justin Thomas
2016 - Jordan Spieth
2015 - Patrick Reed
2014 - Zach Johnson
2013 - Dustin Johnson
Champion's Profile
Last year, nearly half the field, 18 guys, reached 20-under -- and three guys soar past 30-under. Really, when you shoot that low, every facet of your game is cooking. Not only was Smith ranked fourth in driving distance, he was T5 in greens in regulation, seventh in Strokes Gained: Around the Green, third in SG: Tee-to-Green and first in putting, making an enormous 387 feet worth of putts. Jon Rahm, one shot behind Smith, was largely on par everywhere but on the greens, where he ranked fifth in SG: Putting. Still excellent, but it likely cost him. Even though it's first tournament of the year, we'll say what we always say: Approach play rules on the PGA Tour, but putting can cure so many wrongs. Because of all the trickiness of the putting surfaces, placement on approach shots is important. That's why course knowledge is viewed with such importance here. No TOC rookie has won since Daniel Chopra in 2008. But with such a small, no-cut field, it's certainly possible for a first-timer to secure a high finish, as Rahm did five years ago and Niemann did two years ago with their runners-up. The fairways are some 50-60 yards wide, roughly double what the golfers see most of the year, so for most guys it's still bombs away.
DRAFTKINGS VALUE PICKS
Based on Standard $50K Salary Cap
Tier 1 Values
Jon Rahm - $10,000 (Winning odds at the DraftKings Sportsbook: +650)
Rahm comes here every year and always finishes top-10 -- including a pair of runners-up, one of them last year. It seems impossible that 33-under would not win a golf tournament, but Rahm was snake-bit last year. He struggled for much of the year with his short game, though that showed improvement with a pair of wins late in 2022.
Patrick Cantlay - $9,700 (+1000)
It's very hard to sidestep Justin Thomas here, since he has two wins and five top-5s in the past six years on the Plantation course. But we begrudgingly will and turn to Cantlay. He has not played since the Shriners in early October, and that has been his lone start since the TOUR Championship in August. But don't let that dissuade you. Last year, Cantlay shut it down completely after East Lake, showed up at Kapalua almost five months later and finished fourth. He also was fourth here in 2020. Cantlay ranked fifth on Tour last season in birdie-or-better percentage.
Tier 2 Values
Xander Schauffele - $9,500 (+1000)
For a long while, Schauffele was the master of the small-field win, including at Kapalua in 2019. He came back the next year and finished runner-up, then was fifth in 2021. The field is not as small as it used to be, but it's not big. Schauffele had a very good finish to 2022, with top-10s in the final two playoff events, then another at the ZOZO and -- for what it's worth -- one more at the 20-man Hereo World Challenge, where he finished fourth. He ranked eighth on Tour last season in BOB percentage.
Cameron Young - $8,800 (+2000)
We noted above how first-timers tend to struggle a bit at Kapalua. But we're going to take a flyer on Young -- over Sungjae Im, who's a little lower in Tier 2 -- because of his ultra-aggressive play. He hits the ball a ton, and there's very little to hinder him at Kapalua. It would be no surprise to see Young exceed 400 yards multiple times. He ranked sixth on Tour last season in BOB percentage and is coming off a third-place showing at the Hero. Will Zalatoris at $8,900 might be in play, we'll wait to see how his back holds up.
Tier 3 Values
Adam Scott - $7,600 (+4500)
Scott has not been a regular visitor to Kapalua, playing there only twice in the past decade, in 2014 and 2021. He has announced a bigger commitment to his play this year, and that's why he's showing up in the States as early as possible. At 42, the Aussie has lost nothing off the tee, ranking 15th on Tour in driving distance last season. Scott was a top-50 putter in 2021-22 and ranked 30th in BOB percentage.
Aaron Wise - $7,400 (+3500)
Wise is among the longer hitters and an aggressive player who ranked 21st on Tour in BOB percentage last season. And now that his putting is vastly improved, it will be very interesting to see how far he can rise in 2023. He arrives in Hawaii at a career-best 33rd in the world rankings. He had a decent fall season that followed an outstanding playoffs -- 15th at the BMW, T6 at the the Tour Championship -- against many of the same players he will see this week. The tricky Kapalua greens will test how far Wise has come with the flat stick. He played there once before in 2019.
Long-Shot Values
Tom Hoge - $6,500 (+7500)
The $6,000s are very dicey -- more than usual -- even with a small field. Most of these guys have not played Kapalua before. That aside, the best player in this price range is Hoge, who at No. 36 in the world continues to get little respect from the price-makers. Hoge rebounded from a terrible mid-summer slump to run off four straight top-15 finishes in the fall -- and that followed a top-5 in the TOUR Championship. He ranked 33rd in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green last season and 47th in BOB percentage.
Adam Svensson - $6,400 (+13000)
Svensson was the last player to enter the field after he won the the 2022-closing RSM Classic. So the start of his 2023 took an unexpected but fantastic turn. The Canadian is one of the shortest hitters in the field, but as noted above, there is a path for short hitters to thrive this week. Besides, at $6,400, we don't need Svensson to come anywhere close to winning to pay off. Despite beginning many holes at a disadvantage, Svensson ranked 33rd in BOB percentage last season.
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