When does the PGA Tour's 2024 season start?

01/01/2024 18:00

The 2024 PGA Tour sees a return to a calendar-based schedule starting in January.

Occupying the coveted spot of PGA Tour opener is the Sentry Tournament of Champions which starts on 4 January 2024.

The 2024 PGA Tour will be the 109th season of the pro tour and the 56th season since separating from the PGA of America. The 2024 PGA Tour will stage the 18th edition of the FedEx Cup.

The Sentry Tournament of Champions is the calendar-year opening tournament of golf’s PGA Tour season and is currently played in Hawaii on the island of Maui.

The Sentry was founded in 1953 under the name Tournament of Champions; for most of its history, the field was restricted to golfers who won a tournament during the previous calendar year, but players who qualified for the preceding Tour Championship are now invited as well.

Since 1999, the season-opener has been played over the Plantation Course at the Kapalua Resort near Lahaina on the island of Maui in Hawaii.

The course has some spectacular changes of elevation changes, and rolling fairways often collect record-length drives at the event.

Previous Tournament of Champions venues include the Desert Inn Country Club in Las Vegas, Nevada, from the event’s inception until 1966, and the Stardust Country Club, also in Las Vegas, in 1967 and 1968. For the following thirty years, between 1968 and 1998, it was played at La Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad, California; it moved from May 1985 to January 1986 and relocated to Maui in 1999.

The PGA Tour’s 2023 winners and those who finished in the top 30 of the FedExCup will open the year in Maui.

A denser playing turf than the original Bermuda, Celebration Bermudagrass, was used to regrass 100 acres of the Plantation Course’s fairways in 2019. This surface can be mowed more closely to prevent trampling all year round.

Bill Coore of the Crenshaw and Coore design team said the idea of the Plantation course was to have players be able to land a shot 60 yards short of the greens and have it roll on. However, over time, the surface made that impossible, which prompted the 2019 changes.

"Years ago, you would hit a tee shot and it would chase and chase and chase unbelievable distances. But as the grass grew and grew for 30 years, a lot of that element was lost," Coore said.

"The course had gotten so soft that it was easy pickin's for TOUR players and really long for resort players.

"The idea at Kapalua always was to land a shot 60 yards short of a green and let it roll on.

"In recent years, a ball landing 20 yards short of a green would just stop. It will play differently. … Players will be able to use side-slopes to feed shots to a flag. And drives will roll out farther, sometimes closer to trouble."

The greens, which had shrunk down over the years were also expanded during the 2019 renovation.

The top six longest drives on the PGA Tour were all achieved at this venue and it makes for some spectacular viewing making it a favourite for players and fans.

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