This article is part of our Weekly PGA Recap series.
Imagine if there was a no-hitter in baseball every day or a near no-hitter. It'd get boring, and meaningless, pretty quickly, right?
Which takes us to Justin Thomas shooting 59 on Thursday, Woody Austin (on the Champions Tour) shooting 59 on Friday, Kevin Kisner missing a 59 by inches on Saturday and, to top it all off, Twitter getting excited about a #57Watch for Chez Reavie – Chez Reavie! – on Sunday. Alas, poor Chez merely played par over his last six holes to limp home with a 61.
Thomas used that opening 59 as a springboard to his second straight win, completing the Hawaiian double with a seven-stroke win at the Sony Open on Sunday. Combined with the CIMB Classic in Malaysia in October and the SBS Tournament of Champions last week, Thomas has won three times in his last five events to vault to No. 8 in the OWGR.
Social media subsequently inducted Thomas into the Hall of Fame.
For sure, three wins, much less three in five events, is a career most golfers would kill for. But Kapalua was the easiest course among the 50 played on the PGA Tour last season, Kuala Lumpur was fourth easiest and Waialae was sixth easiest.
Almost everyone was going low at the Sony, but no one else was within the same ZIP Code as Thomas, and we don't have to look any further than the first weekend and a half of the NFL playoffs to see how blowouts resonate with
Imagine if there was a no-hitter in baseball every day or a near no-hitter. It'd get boring, and meaningless, pretty quickly, right?
Which takes us to Justin Thomas shooting 59 on Thursday, Woody Austin (on the Champions Tour) shooting 59 on Friday, Kevin Kisner missing a 59 by inches on Saturday and, to top it all off, Twitter getting excited about a #57Watch for Chez Reavie – Chez Reavie! – on Sunday. Alas, poor Chez merely played par over his last six holes to limp home with a 61.
Thomas used that opening 59 as a springboard to his second straight win, completing the Hawaiian double with a seven-stroke win at the Sony Open on Sunday. Combined with the CIMB Classic in Malaysia in October and the SBS Tournament of Champions last week, Thomas has won three times in his last five events to vault to No. 8 in the OWGR.
Social media subsequently inducted Thomas into the Hall of Fame.
For sure, three wins, much less three in five events, is a career most golfers would kill for. But Kapalua was the easiest course among the 50 played on the PGA Tour last season, Kuala Lumpur was fourth easiest and Waialae was sixth easiest.
Almost everyone was going low at the Sony, but no one else was within the same ZIP Code as Thomas, and we don't have to look any further than the first weekend and a half of the NFL playoffs to see how blowouts resonate with sports fans.
There's still another week of pitch-and-putt ahead at the CareerBuilder Challenge before golfers encounter anything they can remotely classify as, um, a challenge.
Waialae is a par-70, but it could've been a par-68, with its two baby par-5s. Of the 180 holes played on Tour so far this season, the par-5 ninth has played the easiest and the par-5 18th the third easiest.
They used to call the fall season the "silly season." But that was because the tournaments were less important, unrelated to season-long races. With the advent of the wrap-around season, there is no more "silly season," just silly tournaments on silly courses spouting the silliest of numbers.
Throwing darts is not exciting golf, or a true testament of the best golfers.
Let's see some rough, let's see some narrow fairways, let's see some smaller greens.
Let's see some pars.
MONDAY BACKSPIN
Rory McIlroy
The European Tour issued a statement on Monday saying that McIlroy has a stress fracture in a rib and that he has pulled out of this week's Abu Dhabi HSBC Champions. The world No. 2 almost withdrew from last week's BMW SA Open in South Africa after the first round although he cited a back injury at the time. McIlroy stayed in the tournament and wound up losing in a playoff to England's Graeme Storm. The fracture was discovered in an MRI on Monday. There was no announced timetable for McIlroy's return. He could've overtaken Jason Day for No. 1 in the world with a win this week, in a stellar field along with Dustin Johnson, Henrik Stenson, Rickie Fowler, Danny Willett and Alexander Noren.
Justin Rose
The 2015-16 PGA tour was largely a total loss for the Englishman, plagued by a bad back and zero top-10s after early May. It's remarkable he won the Olympics. We're not sure Rose is now fully healthy; he withdrew after the first round of the Hero World Challenge last month. But he looked mighty fine at Waialae, winning the Sony Open B Flight with a 20-under total while introducing new irons. Rose was a top-10 golfer who fell to No. 16 (now 13th after his runner-up), and he could be a real "sleeper" among the bigger names this season. We'll find out more in two weeks at Torrey Pines.
Kevin Kisner
Kisner missed a nine-footer for eagle on his final hole on Saturday, finishing with a 60. His 65 on Sunday left him tied for fourth, his best showing since winning the 2015 RSM Classic 14 months ago. Kisner looked ready to take on the world at that point (but I then drafted him and he didn't). He was T5 at Waialae a year ago but largely disappeared thereafter, so this past week should be viewed cautiously. As we mentioned before, the courses are about to get tougher.
Cameron Smith
Smith is a young Aussie who needed the Web.com Tour playoffs to regain his card after last season. He tied for 27th in the Sony, but that made him 5-for-5 in cuts in 2015-16, two of them top-10s after none last season. Yes, we've already torpedoed the strength of the fall/January tournaments, but Smith did better in them than a year ago, and this is only his second full season on tour. Just a 23-year-old to keep on your radar.
Luke List
List tied for 13th at the Sony, and that's his fifth straight top-15 of the season. Nothing silly about that run of success. After a poor start to last season, he tied for sixth at the CareerBuilder, so he has to be a strong consideration in all formats this week. List clearly looks like a young player learning how to deal with the rigors of the PGA Tour. He's fifth in driving distance and 22nd in strokes gained putting. That's a pretty darn good combination.
Hudson Swafford
Swafford stumbled to a 1-over 71 on Sunday to tie for 13th, certainly a disappointing coda to his backers. But that made him 5-for-5 in cuts this season, and 18 in a row going back to last season. That T13 is his best cash during the run, and the stretch does not include any majors, so he's been far from stellar. But there's something to be said about showing up for work every day, and in the world of DraftKings, making cuts counts for a lot.
Hideki Matsuyama
He had never made a cut in four previous visits to Waialae, so we guess T27 is an improvement. But of course not so much for a guy with four wins and two runners-up in his previous six worldwide starts. Matsuyama looked tired at the Sony and he's not in the field this week at La Quinta. But his workload bears watching, as a busy autumn/winter hampered Jordan Spieth last year. Matsuyama's travel has not been nearly as extensive as was Spieth's, but he has played a lot of golf and it's still only January.
Pat Perez
Speaking of tired. … Perez admitted as much during the Sony, and it showed with a final-round 76 that dropped him 31 spots to T69. The 40-year-old is sitting out the CareerBuilder, but let's see how he handles the rest of the West Coast Swing, historically the highpoint of his season.
Jimmy Walker
If Walker doesn't do well in Hawaii, uh oh. He won the Sony in 2014 and 2015, and he tied for 13th last year. And it was well reported that he had collectively played the tournament like a gazillion shots better than anyone else over the past few years. And then he trunk-slammed on Friday. We can't fade Walker much more than we already have.
Wesley Bryan
Checking in on the breakout star from last season's Web.com Tour. Bryan missed the cut at the Sony, after MCing in his final event of the fall. He opened with three straight cashes, but none better than T41. In other words, taking the leap from the WCT to the PGA Tour is not easy. It would not be surprising to see Bryan struggle all season.
