Jon Rahm has from today a great challenge in Hawaii: to become the second Spaniard (after Sergio Garcia in 2002) and third European (Daniel Chopra in 2008) to win the PGA Tour’s Sentry Tournament of Champions. The Basque player competes for the title with 33 other championship rivals, winners last season on the U.S. Tour.
Rahm will tee off at Kapalua Golf Club paired with reigning Augusta Masters champion Patrick Reed.
The defending champion is Dustin Johnson, who will start the tournament playing Bryson DeChambeau in another of the opening day’s star matches.
Apart from Rahm, the only Spaniard in play, there are only three other Europeans in the Sentry TOC: the winner of the last British Open, Francesco Molinari, Rory McIlroy and Paul Casey. The other non-Americans at Kapaula Golf Club this week are Japan’s Satoshi Kodaira and Australians Marc Leishman and former world number one Jason Day.
Tiger is one of the main protagonists of the tournament, but by his absence, since the Californian, winner of the tournament in 2000 and who has not played since 2005, has decided not to participate this year either.
Woods was qualified to play in the Sentry TOC by virtue of his victory at the Tour Championship last September, in what was his first PGA Tour victory since 2013.
The tournament distributes 6,500,000 dollars in prizes, of which the winner will pocket 1,260,000. For those who want to watch it live on television in Spain will have to wait until ten o’clock in the evening (ten o’clock in the morning in Hawaii).
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