Best bets for PGA's 2023 Sentry Tournament of Champions

The PGA TOUR returns to Hawaii on the island of Maui at the Sentry Tournament of Champions. A field of 39 players, including 17 of the OWGR Top 20, are here this week. Rory McIlroy is skipping the event and will start his 2023 campaign on DP World Tour in Abu Dhabi in a few weeks. Last year's winner was Cameron Smith, who shot 34-under par to win the tournament wire-to-wire. Will Zalatoris cemented his status as a top player in the golf world last year. He won his first Pga TOUR event in 2022 and finished runner-up in two majors.

The Tournament of Champions is played at Kapalua Resort in Maui since 1999. It was established in 1953 at the Desert Inn Country Club. Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Tom Watson, Gary Player, Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods, Geoff Ogilvy, Dustin Johnson and Justin Thomas have won the event multiple times. This year's field is made up of PGA Tour winners from last year and players that finished in the Top 30 of the final 2022 FedEx Cup playoffs.

The PGA TOUR announced record prize money for the 2022–23 season. The prize purse for elevated events increased from US$8.2 million to $15 million.

WM Phoenix Open will increase from $8.5 million to $20 million in purse in 2022. RBC Heritage will go from $ 8.3 million and Wells Fargo Championship from 9.2 million. Travelers Championship will rise from 8 million dollars to 20 million by 2022, with a purse of $10 million more.

The Plantation Course at Kapalua Resort was designed in 1991 by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw. It is laid out over an immense area of terrain on the lower slopes of the volcanic West Maui Mountains. The track only has three Par 3s and is a rare par 73 that measures 7,596 yards. There are 11 Par 4s on it and eight of them measure under 425 yards, and there are 93 bunkers.

Steve Stricker won the tournament in 2012. Jonathan Byrd won it in 2011, 2010 and 2015.

There are winning trends for the Sentry Tournament of Champions. 11 of the last 13 winners were aged 33 or younger. 12 of them had at least 3 career PGA Tour victories. 13 of last 14 winners had played in at at the least one previous Tournament. of Champion event.

Patrick Cantlay is 11/1 Circa Sports. Cantay has two Top 4 finishes in the last three years. He ranks 5th in this field for Proximity to the Hole and 3rd in Par 5 Scoring.

Collin Morikawa is 45/2 Circa Sports. Morikawai has ties to Maui and his grandparents live there. He was recently married and has never finished worse than 7th in three events on Mauki.

Sungjae Im is 20/1 BetMGM. Im has finishes of 5th and 8th here on two appearances. He led the field in SG: Tee To Green on debut two years ago.

Sam Burns is the #1 putter for Strokes Gained: Putting on Bermudagrass over the last 36 rounds.