KAPALUA, Hawaii — Tom Hoge, who grew up in North Dakota, found the ideal atmosphere Thursday in Kapalua, keeping his expectations low and riding some great golf momentum to a 64 par, 9 under, to take a one-shot lead at The Theater Championship at The Sentinel in the PGA Tour season opener.
Hideki Matsuyama tried a new putter — he saw others using it and thought it would work for him — and he hit a birdie-eagle-birdie stretch on the back nine that got him 65 with a beefed-up Will Zalatoris.
That was the theme on the first day of the new PGA Tour season, and there's more at stake than before. Most of the 60-man courses took a brief hibernation over the holidays, hoping to shake off some rust on the Plantation course, which has some of the widest, most spacious fairways they'll see all year.
Xander Schauffele, a double major champion and the highest-ranked player in the field, was one of the few who showed up at Kapalua over the weekend. His two fruitless searches for golf balls led to a bogey on the back nine and a 72.
Hogg, one of 29 players who went to Kapalua without a win (including the top 50 players from last year's FedExCup), wasn't sure what to expect.
The weather didn't allow him to train much in Fort Worth, Texas, where he now lives. His first child, a boy named Thomas Bennett, who had been born a few weeks earlier, was also not born.
“I traveled all over Mexico the first week of November and then I was home,” he said. “We had our first baby in early December, so we were kind of forced to take some time off. I feel like with the schedule changes, there was a lot of golf last year between now and the Tour Championship. I felt like I was exhausted at that point.”
If his game was rusty, his putter was not. He made a 15-foot birdie outside the gate, made a 6-footer for par on the next hole, made an 18-foot birdie on the third hole and chipped in from a dangerous position on the fourth hole.
“It just frees you up. And you're in Maui and you just have no expectations, just let it go and see what you can do,” he said.
Zalatoris looked even bigger when he arrived. He took two months off after failing to make the Tour Championship and used the time to build some muscle, which he hopes will extend his longevity after missing so many games with back problems.
He missed the final four months of 2022 and then the remainder of 2023 due to back surgery, when he had to withdraw from the Masters.
“I feel like I haven't even had surgery right now,” Zalatoris said. “I want to keep raising the ceiling because I know if I try to hit the ball 300 yards at 160 pounds, that's not a recipe for longevity.”
He withdrew from the BMW Championship in August at 163 pounds. When he boarded the plane from Dallas to Maui, he weighed 182 pounds.
“I hope my best golf performance this year is at the end of the season,” he said.
Not bad for the first day of the new season. Zalatoris didn't make a bogey, but a three-putt on the par-5, the easiest hole on the Plantation Course, felt like a bogey.
Collin Morikawa, Cameron Young and Corey Conners shot 66 while Tony Finau was out with left knee surgery Entered the group with a 67 in his first game in four months.
Matsuyama, who has been playing in Japan during the fall, made a three-putt bogey from 15 feet on the 13th hole. He then hit a mediocre tee shot on the next hole, but hit his wedge to 10 feet for birdie and kept going. He hit a 5-wood to 5 feet for eagle on No. 15, hit a wedge to 4 feet for birdie on the next hole and had a chance to tie Hogg until he hit the downhill 18th hole. Not catching all the 3-woods and not getting the win.
The new season started without world number one player Scottie Scheffler, who pricked his hand on broken glass while preparing Christmas dinner.
It's also the start of a new structure where only the top 100 players in the FedExCup rankings (reduced from 125 players) will retain next year's full deck.
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