Six golfers with Georgia ties will be among the 32 players in the field for this week’s Hyundai Tournament of Champions in Hawaii.
The PGA Tour is playing its first event since the RSM Classic at Sea Island Golf Club in November, and will play in Honolulu next week, with that tournament the first full field event for 2016. Most of the approximately 25 PGA Tour exempt players with Georgia ties will be in the field for that tournament.
The defending champion in the Tournament of Champions is former Augusta State star Patrick Reed, who won last year’s event in a playoff over Jimmy Walker, with Macon native and ex-Georgia Bulldog Russell Henley among three players missing the playoff by one shot. Reed and Walker finished with 21-under 271 totals.
Reed has four victories since becoming a PGA Tour member in 2013, and closed out 2015 with four consecutive top 10s in international tournaments, including a playoff loss in a European Tour event in Shanghai. Reed, who led the Jaguars to back-to-back national championships in 2010 and ’11, begins 2016 as the 10th-ranked player in the World Golf Ranking.
Also in this week’s field are former Masters champions Zach Johnson and Bubba Watson, along with Davis Love, the oldest qualifying player, and Chris Kirk and Kevin Kisner, teammates on Georgia’s 2005 NCAA Championship team.
Johnson, a St. Simons Island resident, earned his spot in the T of C field with a dramatic playoff victory in last year’s British Open, the second major title of Johnson’s 12-year PGA Tour career. Johnson has 12 career PGA Tour victories, two of them coming in Hawaii. He won the Tournament of Champions in 2014 and placed seventh in the tournament last year. He was sixth in the FedExCup standings in 2015 and is 13th in the World Ranking beginning 2016.
Watson, who played one season on the Georgia golf team in 2000, earned his spot in the Tournament of Champions field with his second career win in Hartford. He has eight titles in his 10 seasons on the PGA Tour, including the 2012 and ’14 Masters. Watson, who finished 10th in the T of C last year, was fifth in the 2015 FedExCup standings and is currently fourth in the World Golf Ranking. He won a playoff last year in Hartford against Paul Casey, with ex-Bulldog Brian Harman one shot out of the playoff.
Love collected his 21st career victory last year in Greensboro at the age of 51, and will be making what could be his final appearance in the Tournament of Champions. Among Love’s career titles is the 1993 Tournament of Champions, with this year’s appearance his first in the tournament since 2009. Love, a long time St. Simons Island resident, will also be playing in this year’s Masters. He shot 64 in the final round in Greensboro last year to win by one.
Kirk has scored three of his four PGA Tour wins the last two seasons, including the 2015 Colonial, where he won by a shot over Jordan Spieth, Brandt Snedeker and fellow Georgia resident Jason Bohn. Kirk, who grew up in Woodstock, lived on St. Simons Island for a number of years and has settled in Athens, also scored a key singles victory in the narrow U.S. Presidents Cup victory, holing a clutch birdie putt on the 18th hole to win his match 1-up.
Kisner will be making his first start in the Tournament of Champions after winning the RSM Classic at Sea Island Golf Club, the final PGA Tour event of 2015. Kisner emerged as a big-time player on the PGA Tour last year, earning spots in playoffs in the Heritage Classic, Players Championship and the Greenbrier before scoring a decisive victory to end 2015. Kisner, an Aiken, S.C., resident, was 21st in the 2015 FedExCup standings and is 17th in the World Rankings beginning 2016.