On Tuesday the tour announced that The Sentry, its season-opening tournament and one of its nine $20 million signature events, will not take place at Kapalua’s Plantation Course in early January as originally scheduled. The decision follows mounting challenges at the resort, which was forced to shut down for two months due to an ongoing water dispute amid Maui’s severe drought conditions. The conflict has erupted into legal action, with resort owner Tadashi Kanai and Kapalua homeowners filing a lawsuit against Maui Land & Pineapple. The plaintiffs allege the company has failed to properly maintain the water delivery system that serves the property.

Maui Land & Pineapple disputes these claims, maintaining it has fulfilled its obligations and attributing the water shortages to naturally low flows rather than system failures.

“Following discussions with the Governor’s office, as well as leadership from Sentry Insurance, Kapalua Resort and Maui County, the PGA Tour has determined the 2026 playing of The Sentry will not be contested at The Plantation Course at Kapalua due to ongoing drought conditions, water conservation requirements, agronomic conditions and logistical challenges,” a tour spokesperson said in a statement. “Additional event information will be shared when appropriate.”

The Plantation Course has been the tour’s calendar opener since 1999, becoming a beloved television spectacle for golf fans seeking a tropical escape during winter’s peak. The stunning Pacific Ocean vistas have made it appointment viewing across snow-covered America. Originally known as the “Tournament of Champions,” the exclusive event featured only the previous season’s tournament winners. That changed after the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, when the field expanded to also include all Tour Championship qualifiers—a modification that became permanent in 2023. The following year brought another transformation: a rebrand to “The Sentry” and elevation to the tour’s signature series, with eligibility extending to the top 50 FedEx Cup finishers from the previous season.

The relocation adds another chapter to Maui’s recent challenges, coming just two years after devastating wildfires swept areas across the island.

The lingering question now facing the tour is what will happen to The Sentry event in 2026. The tour has not announced whether The Sentry will proceed on its scheduled Jan. 8-11, 2026 dates at an alternative venue, move dates or face postponement entirely. Potential host sites span the tour’s winter circuit, including courses in California, Florida, Arizona, Nevada, and other Hawaiian locations.

The disruption won’t affect Hawaii’s other PGA Tour event, as the Sony Open, played at Waialae Country Club in Honolulu on the island of Oahu, remains on the schedule. However, whether the Sony Open could influence where or when the tour holds The Sentry is unclear.

Previously, the Tournament of Champions was played at Omni LaCosta Resort in Carlsbad, California LaCosta’s North Course recently underwent a multi-million dollar renovation and hosts the NCAA men’s and women’s D-I golf championships in May. However, the PGA Tour visits nearby Torrey Pines in February for the Farmers Insurance Open, so it’s unlikely to hold two events so close to each other in the same area.

Interestingly, the PGA Tour did add a ninth signature event to the 2026 PGA Tour schedule to be held at Trump Doral Resort in April. The event currently does not have a sponsor.

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Main Image: Harry How

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Here’s the prize money breakdown for each golfer at the 2025 The Sentry

As the first design collaboration by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, it unveiled their joint admiration for old-style courses. The blind drive on the fourth, the cut-the-corner drives on the fifth and sixth are all based on tee shots found at National Golf Links. So, too, are its punchbowl green and strings of diagonal bunkers. It’s also a massive course, built on a huge scale to accommodate the wind and the slope and the fact that it gets mostly resort play, Coore says.

So it’s a big course. But what sets it apart in my mind are the little things. When I played the course years ago with Coore, it took only one hole for me to appreciate one of its subtleties. We were on the tee of the par-3 second, an OK hole but nothing riveting, nothing like the canyon-carry par-3 eighth or the ocean-backdropped par-3 11th. The second sits on a rare flat portion of the property. The green sits at a diagonal, angling left to right, and there’s a string of bunkers staggering up the right side of the green. The first bunker appears to be directly in front of the green but is actually 40 yards short of it. When pointed out to me, I called it Gingerbread. Bill disagreed.

“The wind quarters off your left shoulder from behind you,” he pointed out. “The green goes ever so slightly away from you from front to back and left to right. It is a very obvious situation, given the wind condition and the angle of this green; you know you should hit a shot left-to-right to fit the shot with the green.

“But if the flag is at the front, there’s no way to fly that ball all the way to the hole and stop it close. You may stop it somewhere on the green, but nowhere within a reasonable putt. So you have to aim short of the green. They maintain the approaches so beautifully over here—firm approaches mowed at probably a quarter of an inch; you can literally putt from out there if you choose to do so.

“But that brings that first bunker in play,” Coore continued. “When the flag is up front, you are absolutely required to land your ball just over that first bunker in order to get it to bounce and run to that front pin position.”

Dave Sansom

Kapalua’s second is a simple-looking hole with a great deal of thought behind it. I suppose a lot of present-day architects would not have placed that forwardmost bunker on the hole, in the interests of playability for high-handicap resort golfers. But most of the old-time architects probably would have used such carry bunkers, especially in the days before irrigation, when greens were hard as a rock and every approach shot had to be bounced aboard.

Another reason why studying the history of architecture might just help your score.

Main Image: Dave Sansom

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