The PGA Tour is back after a six-week hiatus, and there is an event every week until the start of the 2017 football season. Think of it as a great stopgap. This week's tournament is the SBS Tournament of Champions where only 32 golfers (all winners from the 2016 PGA Tour year) will tee it up from paradise.
Let's take a look at this week's contest.
What: Tournament of Champions | Where: Kapalua, Hawaii | When: Jan. 5-8
How to watch (all times ET)
TV: Golf Channel
Thursday-Friday from 6-10 p.m.
Saturday from 4-8 p.m.
Sunday from 6-10 p.m.
Participants and odds
- Dustin Johnson: 5-1
- Hideki Matsuyama: 5-1
- Jordan Spieth: 11-2
- Jason Day: 7-1
- Patrick Reed: 12-1
- Justin Thomas: 14-1
- Bubba Watson: 18-1
- Brandt Snedker: 18-1
- Daniel Berger: 25-1
- Jimmy Walker: 25-1
- Ryan Moore: 25-1
Field strength: B-
It includes four of the top six golfers in the world currently, but the rest of the field is pretty weak. Hopefully this tournament comes down to a duel between Dustin Johnson and Jordan Spieth or Justin Thomas and Jason Day and not, say, Greg Chalmers and Jim Herman.
Three stories to watch
Jason Day's back: Day has not played since the Tour Championship last fall. His back is apparently fully healed, but as we've seen with Day, the next injury is almost always right around the corner. Hopefully he can string together a couple of seasons here with nothing too major.
Hideki Matsuyama's hot hand: Matsuyama has won four of five tournaments, including the HSBC Champions and Tiger Woods' Hero World Challenge in December. He is hotter than a PGA Championship in the south in the middle of August.
Back-to-back?: The last golfer to go back to back at Kapalua was Stuart Appleby in 2005 and 2006. It's hard enough to win a regular tournament and get back here in January and even harder to win two straight at this event like Spieth will try to do this time around.
Past winners
- 2016: Jordan Spieth
- 2015: Patrick Reed
- 2014: Zach Johnson
- 2013: Dustin Johnson
- 2012: Steve Stricker
This is a tremendous list of golfers. Ryder Cup studs, all of them. As an aside, an American has won this tournament in each of the last six years, but before that you have to go all the way back to 2001 to find one (Jim Furyk) who won it.
Let's look at the picks this week.