After a wild finish to the first PGA event of the new calendar year, seeing Jon Rahm chase down Collin Morikawa in this year’s edition of the Sentry TOC, the tour continues their annual Hawaii swing with the Sony Open at Waialae Country Club. The course this week comes in at 7,012 yards from the tournament tees, making this a course that allows average length hitters to stay in the mix of the competition. Unlike The Plantation Course from last week, Waialae is built on much more tame property. The massive drop offs and mountain style golf from The TOC, gives way to a gentler much more “normal” style of PGA golf course. The winning score here is usually well below par. Given that this golf course is a fairly stock oceanfront golf course design, the main defense for the golf course is the wind. If the conditions stay tame you should expect to see the winner this week likely be around 20 under par for the tournament. Per usual for our preview we will highlight one player from the top, middle, and bottom of the pre tournament odds board that we expect to have a good showing at the event this week.
Starting off near the top of the odds board we have Keith Mitchell. Mitchell has a history of relative success at this event in his career. He has played in this event five times. Of those five times he has made the cut four of them and placed in the top 25 every time including a T7 here last season. Coming off what was easily the best season of his career both from a strokes gained perspective and just average finishing position on the leaderboard, we think Mitchell can build on his 2022 success with a good showing at the Sony. His main tool in his bag is his driver, ranking well above average in both driving distance and accuracy on tour. With this being a course that is on the shorter side as far as tour stops go, if he drives the ball with his usual distance and accuracy, he should be well set up to have comfortable wedges into many greens this week. Plus, maybe he is riding high from his beloved UGA Bulldogs capturing a national championship in historic fashion this week. We expect Mitchell to be in contention for the win this week with no worse than a top five finish.
Moving down the odds board, we find David Lingmerth. Now Lingemerth has had a highly unusual career trajectory. He was a staple on tour in the mid 2010’s. He was even a top 50 player in the world at one point in time. After the 2018 season due to poor play he had limited status and had to go back to playing primarily Korn Ferry events to try and regain his full status on the PGA Tour. The 2020 and 2021 results for Lingmerth in competitive events is a bleak sight. More missed cuts than any other result and even when he was making cuts, he was often no where near contention either on the KFT or PGA Tour. His conditional status from winning The Memorial in 2015 was running out. Last year he was able to win the Nationwide Childrens Hospital Championship on the KFT getting him his tour card for the 2022-23 season. In the fall series Lingmerth has either missed the cut, or placed T11 or better. This shows that when he is on, he can contend on tour. On top of that Lingmerth is 7th in the field this week in the course fit rankings on datagolf. Lingmerth isn’t a long hitter, but he is certainly an accurate one. This week that should be enough to keep him near the top of the leaderboard. Look for Lingmerth to place in the Top 10 this week.
Finally we look down near the bottom of the odds board and we find Chez Reavie. Chez played last week in The TOC and he put up a T35. However, getting a warm up week in before the Sony should prove valuable. Chez is another good course fit this week. He is ranked at 18th in the field for course fit. Last season he had five top 15 finishes. Those top 15 finishes were at some big time events, including The Travelers and The Genesis. He is perhaps the most accurate driver of the golf ball on tour. Now obviously Chez is not one of the premier players in the world, but the field this week at The Sony is top heavy. Tom Kim, Hideki Matsuyama, Spieth, and Sungjae are far and away the favorites to win the tournament. After that though, the field is littered with mid tier career journeymen on tour. We think with the potential for a Chez spike week, a warm up week at TOC, his incredible driving accuracy, and his sizable amount of experience, that he is going to finish inside of the top 20 this week at The Sony Open.
As the season goes on, we will make some more picks about who we think will truly win tournaments. Right now we just want to provide an overview of some guys in the field that we feel will have a better than expected week. Here is to hoping all three of these guys pop this week at The Sony, even if they are some unusual suspects!
