This year’s edition of The Sentry was perhaps not the greatest in tournament history, but it still resulted in a feel-good winner, a clutch clutch shot and a whole host of questions that need to be answered in this upcoming season.
Chris Kirk took home the trophy on Sunday, but he was not the only story (although we will get to him in a minute). New scoring records were set (again), Jordan Spieth was (kind of) involved and five major champions finished in the top 10 on the leaderboard. All of this means that we need to dive a bit deeper to see if we can figure out what we think about the 2024 season and this tournament specifically.
Below are six lingering questions as The Sentry has concluded and the 2024 PGA Tour season is off and running.
1. Is this just who Scottie Scheffler is? I feel like a broken record at this point, but golf fans in general have tremendously underrated what Scheffler has accomplished. He is beating 95% of competitors every time out but only has two official PGA Tour wins in his last 25 starts. Is the expectation becoming that he’s going to finish first from tee to green and almost last in putting … every week?
At Kapalua, where he finished T5 on the leaderboard, Scheffler was again first from tee to green and 44th in putting in a field of 59. This is the 14th time in his last 17 starts worldwide that he has ranked in the top three in the field from tee to green, and he has only won three of those events. Three wins is a lot, but when you’re striking it like Tiger Woods in his prime, it probably doesn’t feel that way.
The good news here is that Scheffler is working to correct the problem. He’s experimenting with different putters, grips and recently hired putting coach Phil Kenyon to help solve the issue. It’s worth giving this time to see how it plays out.
“Last year my ball striking was obviously very good and my putting wasn’t as good as I think it needed to be,” said Scheffler before The Sentry. “So when I look back at the season, that was one of the things that I kind of tried to focus on in the offseason. I usually have one aspect that I try to put a little bit of extra emphasis on, if that makes sense, to where I’m still always working on all aspects of my game, but throughout the offseason I have a little bit more time on my hands to focus on different things.
Some years it’s my diet, some years it’s been the time I want to put in the gym, one year it was creating different shots, and then this year kind of the emphasis was placed on putting. I put in a lot of work with Phil over the offseason and I’m excited. I saw a little bit of the fruits of that at the Hero.”
2. Is Sungjae Im the most underrated player in the world? There’s certainly a case to be made. Im also finished T5 alongside Scheffler and set a new record for most birdies made in a 72-hole event on the PGA Tour.
Over the last two years, Im has been statistically better than Justin Thomas, Cam Smith, Will Zalatoris, Tommy Fleetwood, Cameron Young, Jordan Spieth, Sam Burns, Hideki Matsuyama, Dustin Johnson and Jason Day. That’s quite a crew, and this week’s performance at Kapalua was a reminder of the neighborhoods he’s hanging out in and just how ridiculous it is that he’s only 25 years old. He has to be under consideration for the most underrated (and underappreciated) players in the world.
3. Can Chris Kirk win a major? Kirk’s last year or so has been some of the best golf he’s ever played. However, he has nearly three times as many missed cuts (11) as he does top 25s (4) at major championships throughout his career. His only top 10 came at the 2022 PGA Championship at Southern Hills, and he doesn’t hit it far enough to contend at every major championship. It would be a tremendous story, of course, and would not be much different than Brian Harman winning last year’s Open Championship. But based on his history at the four majors in 24 total starts, it does not seem probable that Kirk will follow his massive Kapalua victory with an even bigger one at the Masters, PGA, U.S. Open or Open later this year.
4. Is Sahith Theegala the new Jordan Spieth: Stop me if you’ve heard this! Drives it all over the planet, gets up and down from inconceivable spots, rides every imaginable emotion, goes on heaters that make all other heaters seem tepid by comparison and is incredibly easy to root for. The Sahith Experience might be the new Spieth Experience.
“We all work our butts off to have as many chances as possible,” he said on Sunday of losing by one to Kirk at Kapalua. “So, yeah, it is a little emotional, but I’ve been here before, and I think having one in the bag is something that I’m going to look forward to and look back on as something really positive. I definitely did that today. I was so much calmer than I have been previously. It’s going to take me a day or two to get over it.”
Theegala is not the type of player who is going to be a threat to contend every week like a Patrick Cantlay, but when he’s feeling it, you can cancel Christmas. He’s a thrill ride and always has been. Give him some room to gallop off the tee, and he’s going to be a terrific threat (at, say, Augusta National?).
5. Is it time to change the par at Kapalua? All four of the par 5s at Kapalua played to less than 4.5 strokes on average this year. I don’t know that I care one way or another, but it might curtail some of the preposterous numbers a par 73 can engender, especially when there’s no wind blowing. Kapalua is one of the great viewing experiences of the season and now one of the Tour’s eight premier events. While it doesn’t really matter, I do think it could possibly help the fan experience to rein in the scores just a bit in the future and make it a par 72 or even par 71.
6. Did the tournament miss Jon Rahm? Kirk is obviously not a sexy champion, so there was understandably not a ton of juice over the weekend. How much of that was because of the NFL-Kirk combo, and how much was the fact that two of the three best players in the world — Jon Rahm and Rory McIlroy — didn’t tee it up this week? I stand by what I said before the tournament, which is that Tour events lack a certain gravity because of Rahm’s departure to LIV Golf. That’s how good he is, how important he is to golf and how historic of a figure he cuts. Seeing the TV ratings this year compared to years past will be quite interesting when released.